ReportageThe outgoing MP for Pas-de-Calais won nearly 54% of the vote in her stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont, but due to insufficient turnout, was not elected in the first round.
It’s not a triumph, but anyway, she’s happy. “The National Gathering [RN] is this evening the first party of France, it is a factual evidence, slipped Sunday, June 12 Marine Le Pen, all smiles, in Hénin-Beaumont, in his constituency of Pas-de-Calais. There are many, many ridings where we are qualified, so this is a very good result. » She herself was not re-elected in the first round, despite her 53.96% – she only obtained 22.53% of the registered voters, it took a quarter to be elected. “It’s a problem of mobilization, I’ve said it from the start”, insisted the former president of the RN, who however improves her 2017 result by eight points, and even won 63% of the votes in the commune of Hénin-Beaumont, “It’s a great cause for celebration”.
A few hundred activists came to listen to the boss, pecking chips in front of the Guy-Môquet home, rented for the occasion. No pomposity: the journalists are installed in the sewing workshop of an association of the third age; 80 chairs dressed in white have been lined up on the bowling green, giving a curious impression of a wedding ceremony, and Marine Le Pen read a 4:19 statement before briefly blending into the small crowd of her admirers. The message is brief and unadorned: let’s mobilize, the battle is not over, it’s about beating the macronists and the melenchonists.
“In the constituencies which see in the second round a duel between the Republic on the move and the Nupes [Nouvelle Union populaire écologique et sociale], said Marine Le Pen, I urge voters not to choose between destroyers from above and destroyers from below” – the formula had been honed in public meetings last week. “Not to choose between those who want to deprive you of your rights, and those who want to deprive you of your property. France is neither a trading room nor a ZAD. » Eric Zemmour had been more inventive, on May 7, by sending back to back “swimmers in burkinis and zadists in ponchos”.
In Hénin-Beaumont, the activists are certainly a little disappointed. No doubt because Marine Le Pen was not re-elected in the first round, but above all because she spent so quickly, barely an hour and a half, chatting with the press, and without a minimum of celebration, without drums nor trumpets to mark the occasion. “We are not going to celebrate anything at all, slice besides Steeve Briois, the mayor of the city and deputy of Marine Le Pen. We will still wait for the results tonight, and we will prepare the campaign documents for the second round, above all. So it won’t be a party, it will mainly be the reprography and layout workshop, that’s going to be it. »
You have 43.45% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.