{"id":313645,"date":"2017-04-25T05:27:25","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=313645"},"modified":"2017-04-25T05:27:25","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T05:27:25","slug":"france-elections-le-pen-steps-aside-as-national-front-leader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/04\/france-elections-le-pen-steps-aside-as-national-front-leader\/","title":{"rendered":"France elections: Le Pen steps aside as National Front leader"},"content":{"rendered":"
Far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that she is stepping aside as leader of her National Front (FN) party.<\/p>\n
The move comes just a day after she reached the second round of the French election, where she will face centrist Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n
Ms Le Pen told French TV she needed to be above partisan considerations.<\/p>\n
Opinion polls suggest Mr Macron is firm favourite for the second round but Ms Le Pen said: “We can win, we will win.”<\/p>\n
The French term she used signalled that the move to step aside would be temporary.<\/p>\n
She told France 2 that France was approaching a “decisive moment”.<\/p>\n
Ms Le Pen said her decision had been made out of the “profound conviction” that the president must bring together all of the French people.<\/p>\n
“So, this evening, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the candidate for the French presidency,” she said.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Hugh Schofield in Paris says this is a symbolic act intended to show her concerns are for the country as a whole and not for her party, and that she is reaching out for the voters of candidates defeated in the first round, particularly those of the Republicans’ Fran\u00e7ois Fillon.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, also on Monday, Mr Fillon told party leaders that he “no longer had the legitimacy” to take the party into legislative elections that will follow next month’s presidential run-off.<\/p>\n
He said he would become “an ordinary activist like any other”.<\/p>\n
Ms Le Pen took over the FN leadership from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in January 2011.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that she is stepping aside as leader of her National Front (FN) party. The move comes just a day after she reached the second round of the French election, where she will face centrist Emmanuel Macron. Ms Le Pen told French TV she needed to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[107],"tags":[6528,6521],"yoast_head":"\n