by WorldTribune Staff, February 6, 2017
A France enslaved to the European Union risks losing its identity to globalism and Islamic fundamentalism, National Front party candidate Marine Le Pen said on Feb. 5 as she formally launched her presidential campaign.
“There will be no other laws and values in France but French,” Le Pen said.
“We do not want to live under the rule or threat of Islamic fundamentalism. They are looking to impose on us gender discrimination in public places, full body veils or not, prayer rooms in the workplace, prayers in the streets, huge mosques . . . or the submission of women,” she said.
Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and U.S. President Donald Trump’s election have revealed the “awakening of the people against oligarchies,” Le Pen said. She lauded Trump as a man who respects campaign promises and “acts quickly.”
Le Pen pledged to pull France out of the European Union, control the country’s borders and re-adopt the old French franc as the national currency.
The European Union, she said, “is a failure. It hasn’t upheld one of its promises especially in terms of prosperity and security.”
If elected, Le Pen said she would call for a referendum on EU membership within six months. She also predicted other European Union members would follow.
The estimated 5,000 people in the arena and watching on big screens cheered and chanted “On est chez nous” (“We are in our land.”)
“We’ve witnessed the impoverishment of France for some years now at a cultural, economic and social level,” Billy Winkens, a Le Pen supporter from Toule, in eastern France, said. “Today, people are hungry for change and want to drain the swamp, but in an orderly fashion, with coherence.”
Le Pen has been a leader in early polls, which place her at the top in the April 23 first-round vote but not winning the May 7 runoff.
The right’s leading candidate, Francois Fillon, has been caught up in a corruption scandal which has created an opening for centrist Emmanuel Macron, who could end up facing Le Pen in the final round of the two-part election.
“We are at a crossroad. . . . This election is a choice of civilization,” Le Pen said, asking whether her three children and other young citizens would have the same rights of the current generation. “Will they even speak our French language?”