Wednesday, 26/04/2017 16:50 (GMT+7)
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has announced that she is temporarily stepping down as head of her National Front Party.
Ms. Marie Le Pen (Photo: AFP)
"Tonight, I am no longer the president of the National Front. I am the presidential candidate," Ms Le Pen said on French public television news.
"I have always considered that the president of the republic is the president of all French people. Now is the moment to move from words to action, and it is the reason why it seemed essential to me to leave the leadership role of the party", Ms. Le Pen added.
Centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-Right leader Marine Le Pen will face one another in the final round of the French presidential election on May 7th, according to exit polls.
Marin Le Pen, born in August 1968, has been the president of the National Front (FN) since 2011.
Le Pen joined the National Front in 1986 and was elected as a regional councillor (1998 - present), a Member of European Parliament (2004 - present), and a municipal councillor in Henin-Beaumont (2008 - 2011). She won the leadership of the National Front in 2011 with 67.65% (11,546 votes) of the vote, defeating Bruno Gollnisch and succeeding her father, who had been president of the party since he founded it in 1972. In 2012, she placed third in the presidential election with 17.90% of the vote, behind Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy./.
Compiled by BTA