Le Pen goes to court to stop FN party scrapping his post

Veteran far-right French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen announced Friday he is taking legal action in a bid to prevent the National Front (FN), the far-right party he founded, from changing its statutes and scrapping his post.

Le Pen is engaged in a bitter feud with his daughter Marine Le Pen, who now runs the FN party which is attempting to remove its founder from his post as honorary president.

A court hearing has been set for Tuesday at the Paris suburb of Nanterre, the elder Le Pen told AFP.

Under the FN leadership's plans, over 50,000 party faithful will vote by postal ballot from now till July 10 on scrapping his honorary post.

"The results of this consultation will be collected under illegal conditions and not in conformity with the statutes of the National Front, said Jean-Marie Le Pen's lawyer Frederic Joachim.

His client will contest the validity of the balloting method, the "too short" period of three weeks given to party members to express their views ahead of the vote, as well as the procedure of block voting -- in which voters are required to approve or reject the new statutes in their totality.

The same court on Thursday overturned the suspension of Jean-Marie Le Pen after he was booted out of the party he founded.

That court ordered the party to "restore" Le Pen's membership and position as honorary president two months after he was ousted by daughter Marine.
It said that while Le Pen's suspension was justified, the party "violated statutory rules" by not specifying it was a temporary measure pending a disciplinary procedure.

"I am honorary president for life. The court has ruled that in a single, very clear, sitting," Le Pen senior said later on RTL television.

The National Front (FN) swiftly announced it would appeal the decision.

Le Pen, 87, was suspended in May over a string of controversial remarks that led to a vicious row with his daughter, whom he publicly disowned.

Marine, 46, decided enough was enough after her father repeated his view that the Nazi gas chambers were merely a "detail" of history and also claimed that France had to get along with Russia to save the "white world".

While the FN remains anti-EU and anti-immigration it has worked hard to soften its image since Marine took over in 2011 and has seen its popularity soar, enjoying a series of election successes.

Several polls have shown she could pose a serious challenge to the conservative Republicans of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy as well as the ruling Socialists in 2017.