Senior French officials on Wednesday slammed the “shameful” street celebrations that erupted in several cities following the death of far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen.
The co-founder of France’s main postwar far-right movement Jean-Marie Le Pen divided the country even beyond the grave on Wednesday, with the government slamming celebrations that erupted nationwide after his death.
Le Pen, co-founder of the National Front (FN) died on Tuesday aged 96, leaving a legacy which the French presidency said would be judged by history. The right praised his contribution to politics but the left praised the demonstrations and branded him a “fascist”.
In the hours after his death, hundreds of people took to the streets in cities across France to celebrate his demise, singing, letting off fireworks and making toasts with champagne.
Jubilant opponents of Le Pen cheered as they gathered in Place de la Republique in central Paris for what they dubbed an “apero giant” (giant aperitif), brandishing placards including “the dirty racist is dead” and “a beautiful day”.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies dancing on a corpse. The death of a man, even if he is a political opponent, should inspire only restraint and dignity,” Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau wrote on X.
“These scenes of jubilation are simply shameful,” he added.
The far-right-winger was an “enemy of the Republic”, Panot told RTL radio.
‘Must not lead to blindness’
Socialist MP Jerome Guedj told Public Senat TV that while “I find it wrong to rejoice at the death of a man, I also find it wrong to sugarcoat his career”.
In a tribute on X, French Prime Minister Francois Bayrou said Le Pen was a “fighter” and a “figure of French political life”, a comment that enraged the hard-left.
“Jean-Marie Le Pen… was not just ‘a figure of French political life’ as Francois Bayrou said. Respect for the deceased must not lead to blindness to his career,” said the leader of the LFI’s MPs in the European Parliament, Manon Aubry, describing Le Pen as “a notorious racist and anti-Semite”.
A family funeral for Le Pen is to be held on Saturday in his home town of La Trinite-sur-Mer in Brittany.
His political mantle was taken by his daughter Marine but she moved emphatically to distance the movement from the legacy of her father, renaming the party the National Rally (RN) and embarking on a process dubbed “dediabolisation” (de-demonisation) to make it electable.
In her first public reaction, Marine Le Pen on Wednesday called her father a “warrior”, adding that “many” people were mourning him.
“Many people he loves are waiting for him up there. Many who love him are mourning him down here,” she wrote on X.
Marine Le Pen had been returning from a visit to the cyclone-ravaged French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte when news broke of her father’s death.
The RN’s deputy leader Louis Aliot confirmed reports that she had learned of the death of her father from reporters travelling with her.
“We were on the plane in Nairobi where we made a technical stopover,” and it was in the Kenyan capital “that journalists who were on the flight informed us of the death”, he told TF1 television channel.
(AFP)
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