PARIS (AP) – Jean-Marie Le Pen risked suspension or exclusion from the far-right National Front he co-founded more than four decades ago but, in a surprise move, the feisty honorary president said he offered an outstretched hand to members of a party tribunal on Thursday in search of a “signal of pacification.”
“I’m almost a man alone,” the 87-year-old Le Pen said as he exited the hearing before the National Front’s executive bureau to defend himself against 15 complaints, the latest effort by his daughter, the party president, to oust him.
The family feud, which has mushroomed into a debilitating crisis for the anti-immigration party, opened a new chapter with the summoning of Le Pen by daughter Marine Le Pen before the bureau to explain himself. The complaints target recent public statements by Le Pen, including those in which he downplayed Nazi gas chambers and insulted his daughter and the party’s No. 2 figure Florian Philippot – whom father Le Pen openly distrusts.
“I will of course contest … their right to judge me,” Le Pen told iTele TV as he arrived for the meeting, accompanied by his wife and lawyer.
Three hours later, Le Pen emerged sounding conciliatory. He referred to the bureau members “not as judges, since I recused them, but as companions in combat.”
“I expressed the hope that this episode … can be a step toward the active reunification of the National Front,” he said.
While daughter Marine Le Pen signed off on the complaints, she was not present at the high-stakes meeting. Philippot was also absent. Both are part of the eight-member executive bureau. But Philippot said in an interview with the daily L’Opinion that they prefer not to be both judges and accusers in what amounts to a trial.
It was not known whether a decision would come Thursday, or later.
Marine Le Pen, who has set her sights on the 2017 presidential race, has worked to clean up the image of the National Front since 2011 when she took over the leadership as the chosen successor of her father – who has been convicted numerous times of racism and anti-Semitism. The bombastic Jean-Marie Le Pen maintains that his remarks, however offensive, fall into the domain of freedom of expression.
He contends his daughter is changing the National Front’s identity in her bid to offer a political alternative to the French – and doing so with the help of Philippot whose stack of degrees adds special weight to his policies.
The complaints include a remark first made years ago, and repeated in April, that the Nazi gas chambers are a “detail in the history” of World War II. That unleashed the feud and series of legal disputes.
Father and daughter have battled in court three times since April, with Jean-Marie Le Pen winning each round to maintain his title as the party’s honorary president for life.
Thursday’s meeting was the second of the executive board clearly trying to push out Jean-Marie Le Pen – who has but one supporter among the eight board members. The elder Le Pen earlier called the hearing “abject” and “undignified” of a candidate for the French presidency.
After the hearing, Le Pen said that “it’s for the organization which took the initiative (to call him on the carpet) to give a signal of pacification.”
“It’s an invitation to talk together,” he told reporters, noting that his daughter and Philippot were absent.
Bruno Gollnisch, a member of the party’s old guard also present at the hearing, said earlier it “would be stupefying” if Jean-Marie Le Pen was excluded from the National Front.
“The National Front can exist without Jean-Marie Le Pen, but it can’t exist in contradiction with all the positions he stands for,” Gollnisch told BFM-TV as he arrived at party headquarters in Nanterre, west of Paris.