Marine Le Pen has dosed a lot in public interventions and has been quite discreet during the serious national crisis that France has experienced due to the revolt in the suburbs. The leader of the extreme right, candidate for the Elysée three times in a row, knows very well that the events are playing in favor of her party, the Reagrupament Nacional (RN), which the polls make the winner in the European elections of the year it comes.
Le Pen is no longer formally the president of the RN – the position is held by Jordan Bardella, 27 years old -, but no one doubts that, if the circumstances are even minimally favorable, she will try for the fourth time to reach the leadership of the State on 2027.
Bardella himself and other leaders of the party have indeed intervened in the media, daily, to always try to bring water to their mill. But Le Pen has not lavished herself, quite the opposite. Analysts have been surprised by the relative silence during the acute phase of the riots. Le Pen has preferred to keep a low and cautious profile, to reserve himself.
In reality, Le Pen’s discretion was already very noticeable during the long months of street demonstrations against the pension reform. His party was against delaying the retirement age from 62 to 64, but did not present a convincing alternative plan. She preferred to speak little and watch, pleased, how Macron and the Government wore down. Now he has tried something similar.
The former presidential candidate did intervene in the National Assembly on Tuesday during the question session to the Government, when the worst of the riots had already passed. Le Pen was very aggressive. He addressed the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, and told her: “At a time when our country is the victim of looting, looting and senseless incendiary rage, I would like to ask her the question that all French: What have you done?”. The ultra-right deputy lamented that the Government is pursuing the same policy as its predecessors for forty years, and that it allows lawless areas, damaged by crime and communitarianism (voluntary social segregation).
“What have they done to have allowed the ignorance of our culture to flourish, the hostility towards the legal authority of the State, the illegitimacy of our laws and the hatred of our people? Le Pen continued. What have they done to transform our country, among the most polite, the most elegant and sweet on earth, and turn it into an inferno where public buildings burn?”. Le Pen ended the diatribe by recalling that “this show afflicts the whole world, it provokes pity and irony”, and she was concerned about the Olympic Games in Paris 2024.
The Government, meanwhile, is beginning to take measures to compensate for the damage suffered in some sectors by the days of excesses. Shops will be able to open on Sunday and the season of summer offers is extended by a week, despite the fact that in many regions the school holidays and the exodus of families will have already begun.
A fact known yesterday could exasperate spirits again. It was learned that an Uber delivery man, Mohamed, 27 years old, died on the night of Saturday to Sunday of a cardiac arrest in a street in the center of Marseille. The young man, father of a young son and whose partner is pregnant, recorded the riots on video. According to the police, the violent impact on the thorax presented by the victim’s body would be compatible with the firing of a rubber bullet, one of the theoretically non-lethal weapons used by riot police. The investigation is still inconclusive and the circumstances of what happened have yet to be clarified, but the news, which took several days to be revealed, which turned out to be suspicious, is not positive for the Government. It is only known that the deceased was riding a motorcycle when he was injured. It is not clear that he participated in the riots. As his colleague told the BFM-TV station, he was simply recording images with his mobile phone.
The riots took time to reach Marseilles, but when they did they were very virulent. It is estimated that around 400 shops were looted.
According to a recent report from the Ministry of the Interior presented by its head, Gérald Darmanin, to the Senate, during the wave of violence 2,508 buildings were set on fire or damaged throughout France, and 12,031 vehicles were consumed by the flames. Of the 3,505 people arrested, 60% had no judicial or police records. The youngest detainee was a boy of only 11 years and the oldest, 59.
Darmanin indicated that it would be wrong to give an “identity explanation” to the riots. According to the minister, among the people arrested “there are many Kévin and Mattéo”, which indirectly suggested that it is not true that the children and grandchildren of Arab and African immigration were mostly the main culprits of the disorders.
