The founder and former president of the Front National party, Jean-Marie Le Pen, suffered a heart attack on Saturday, April 15th and was hospitalised. According to his relatives, he is now doing well.
The politician is 94 years old. His adviser told AFP that his family and friends were “worried, but serene.” Jean-Marie Le Pen was hospitalised in February 2022 for a mild form of stroke.
“My father is gloriously approaching his 95th birthday, so it requires a few trips to the hospital from time to time to make adjustments of sorts. But he is doing well, and I thank all those who have asked about his health,” said his daughter Marine Le Pen on the RTL-Le Figaro-LCI Grand Jury programme on Sunday morning. “I haven’t seen him yet, it won’t be long,” but “he’s fine, that’s the essential information,” she added, asking for respect for “private life.”
Founder in 1972 of the Front National party—which has since 2018 taken the name of Rassemblement National—he had been expelled in 2015 because of repeated statements deemed problematic by the party authorities and by his daughter, who had taken over from him four years earlier. He remained honorary president until 2018, before retiring from political life, while continuing, on an ad hoc basis, to give interviews on current affairs. His last elective mandate as an MEP ended in 2019.
Some figures in French politics have expressed concern about what they consider to be excessive attention to the old man’s health. The first member of the government to react to this news, Secretary of State for Ecology Bérangère Couillard said she was embarrassed, and recalled the criminal past of the former leader of the Front National:
No information on when Jean-Marie Le Pen will be released from hospital has been communicated at the moment.
