No Second Chance

A post by former vice-president of the Front National Bruno Gollnisch, dated April 17, reviews some recent comments by FN leaders about the election:

On April 6, in an interview with the magazine Le Point, Jean-Marie Le Pen recalled that in 2007 he had, despite all, garnered 3,800,000 votes (compared with 4,800,000 in 2002) and that "Nicolas Sarkozy had siphoned off the votes of people who could have or should have voted for the FN, not the votes of the FN itself. (…) Despite the disproportionate means at his disposal, I do not think that Nicolas Sarkozy can repeat the same performance. Down on the ground, people know the reality! When the president boasts of having reestablished security in the country, the people can see clearly that it's not true! And when he boasts of wanting to restrict immigration, they know that he has brought in more than a million immigrants during his five year term!"

The journal Les Echos emphasizes that Sarkozy "can count only on the 36% who say they are satisfied, according to the latest IFOP poll. A level never reached by an incumbent president." "In this last week of the campaign, Nicolas Sarkozy is above all going to work hard at taking votes away from Marine Le Pen in order to win Sunday night. A sine qua non if he is to win on May 6," insists Jérôme Sainte-Marie of CSA Institute, who indicates that the president is back to where he was in the polls before his campaign began." The UMP candidate (i.e., Sarkozy) on Sunday made a strong appeal to the potential voters of the FN. And he will end his campaign on Friday in Nice, a very right-wing region…"

In a statement to AFP, Marine Le Pen said: "Nicolas Sarkozy has no chance of being reelected."

A member of her campaign team added: "If Marine Le Pen gets 18% and Hollande wins, it's a very good configuration for us. During the legislative elections, with a strong Socialist showing and a strong FN, we can undo the UMP. If Sarkozy loses the election that means he'll leave politics, he has said so. So there will be a void and it will mark the end of the UMP since the UMP was built around Nicolas Sarkozy."

This high official of the FN adds: "In the UMP, there are enormous differences between the various factions. Between NKM (Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, Sarkozy's spokeswoman) and Eric Ciotti (more to the right) there is a world of difference. For now it's merely a coalition of interests, but tomorrow, of necessity, things will have to change."

Bruno Gollnisch notes that this change will depend obviously on the results obtained by Marine Le Pen on April 22, for such is the reality of politics that it is still and forever a power struggle. Marine's campaign team is quite aware of that and knows, as Les Echos reminds its readers, that if the candidate of the Front National "always says she is aiming for the second round and sees herself winning more than 20%", she also feels that "an improvement over the 2002 result of 16.8% would be a success."

"Less than that would unquestionably be a disappointment and less than 15% would be a failure," added a source close to the party.

The answer is in the hands of the "undecided" and other potential abstainers who still have the chance to take their destiny in their own hands. It is an opportunity to seize, because History does not give us a second chance!

The photo was in my files. I'm not sure of the source.