FRANCE: He's back. Just when memories of the 2002 presidential election were fading, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of the extreme right-wing National Front, has announced his candidacy for next year's poll.
This is the 77-year-old Le Pen's fifth presidential campaign since 1974. His score has risen each time and, in 2002, he created a political earthquake by making it to the run-off against President Jacques Chirac, who was re-elected with 82 per cent of the vote to Le Pen's 18 per cent.
At a press conference with the Foreign Press Association, Mr Le Pen was his old pugnacious self. "Let's do the calculation," he said, referring to the fragmentation of political parties that ensured him a place in the run-off last time.
"Consequentially, I will be in the run-off. The entire political class knows it, and that's why they're trying to keep me out of the race."
Candidates need the signatures of 500 mayors to qualify. By publishing the mayors' names, the government seeks to embarrass them out of supporting Le Pen.
Opposition to the "invasion" of France by immigrants has been Mr Le Pen's campaign theme for 32 years.
"I believe that many of France's difficulties, and soon Europe's difficulties, are born of a mad, criminal immigration policy," he said. Ten million foreigners have settled in France in 30 years, he said; 400,000 enter France every year now.
"They come to France because they know that, without working, they will earn 10, 20 or 30 times what they earn at home . . . If we come to power, we will shut off the suction pumps, all the advantages of the 'French social model' which they enjoy whether they enter legally or not - housing, welfare, schools, medical care. The number of foreigners cared for in our hospitals multiplied 16-fold in the past four years! It's suicidal!"
Mr Le Pen mocked the "trilogy" of accusations levelled against him, that he is "racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic".
On the contrary, "I am the victim of discrimination," he said. "The National Front has five million voters, and not a single deputy in the National Assembly."
In three weeks of rioting last November, he noted, "not a single rioter was wounded. They played around for three weeks. It was a scandal. I gave more than 50 television interviews to foreign networks. Not one French channel interviewed me, because they didn't want to hear the word 'immigration'."
The interior minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy is often accused of courting Le Pen voters. "It's a rule of democracy to steal marbles from your buddy's bag," Mr Le Pen commented.
He disagrees with Mr Sarkozy's support for affirmative action and for giving immigrants the right to vote in local elections. "At my age, I don't define myself in relation to Nicolas Sarkozy, this energetic squirrel who runs around and around in his cage, with his fluffy tail."
On Wednesday President Chirac announced he was asking the constitutional council to abrogate an article of a February 2005 law which required schools to teach the "positive aspects" of French colonial history. Mr Le Pen said the law should never have been passed; it was up to people to think what they wanted.
"The French empire was a great thing," said Mr Le Pen. "Judging from the feelings of the African population, France wasn't a cruel stepmother, since these populations try to hide in her skirts."