PARIS -- With just six months to go before presidential elections here, the cast of major candidates vying to unseat the French leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, has now been assembled. But even as Mr. Sarkozy's unpopularity with voters continues to plumb new depths, the outcome of the contest remains far from clear, with rivals to his left and right hoping...
Step inside an office building in the town of Nanterre, just west of Paris, and you are confronted by what the nostrils register as an odor of the past, for it's a rare thing these days to encounter the lingering taint of cigarette smoke in public spaces. The trail of it leads upstairs to a corner office and to the woman who has, in the past few...
HÉNIN-BEAUMONT, France -- The far-right National Front, under the new leadership of Marine Le Pen, is sending shivers through France's political world in the maneuvering for the 2012 presidential elections. Ms. Le Pen, a more telegenic and less cheerfully divisive figure than her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is getting around 20 percent in early...
Jean-Marie Le Pen (født 20. juni 1928) er en højreorienteret, fransk politiker.
Han er søn af fiskeskipperen Jean Le Pen og skrædderen Anne-Marie Hervé. Hele hans familie hører hjemme i det sydlige Bretagne (departementet Morbihan). Ordet pen er bretonsk og betyder "hoved". Den bretonske herkomst har givet ham tilnavnet "Menhir" (bretonsk = "bautasten").
I følge Jean-Marie Le Pen er hans ideologier nationalisme, nationalkonservatisme, konservatisme.
Han grundlage sit parti, Front National (= national front/nationalistisk front) som et modtræk mod den stigende socialisering af det franske samfund. Jean-Marie Le Pen har siden partiets oprettelse været formand, og gentagne gange præsidentkandidat. Han stillede op i 2007 som kandidat for det fjerdestørste parti og kom på 3. pladsen. Fold ud