THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: France's National Front is set to widen its support base if Marine Le Pen is chosen to succeed her father as the far-Right party's new leader this weekend, posing a growing threat to President Nicolas Sarkozy.
The 42-year old mother of three is the runaway favourite to succeed her 82-year-old father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Front (FN) in 1972 and will remain its honorary president.
On Friday, vote counting took place from a mail ballot among the FN's 24,000 members and the official result is due to be announced on Sunday at a party congress in Tours.
The firebrand Mr Le Pen was in no doubt of the outcome. "I have been unable to enact the programme that I believe salutatory for France, (but) the second stage of the Le Pen rocket is Marine," he told Le Parisien.
His daughter is up against Bruno Gollnisch, 60, a white-haired, bookish euro MP who represents the party old guard, and whose supporters include ex-colonialists, anti-Semites and pagan white supremacists.
One FN party member told the Libération newspaper that a Gollnisch victory would "set the party back 30 years". "It would be the Soviet Union under Brezhnev," he said. >>> Henry Samuel, Paris | Friday, January 14, 2011
