The Albany Gazette - Hospitalised French far-right veteran Le Pen doing well: daughter

"He is doing well and I thank all those who have enquired after his health," said Le Pen, who lost out to Emmanuel Macron in the past two French presidential elections.

"I have yet to see him and will do so shortly (but) he is doing well and that is the main thing," she said.

She added that her father, hospitalised Saturday, would require some check-ups, being just a few months' shy of his 95th birthday.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who ran for president five times, sent shock waves through France in 2002 when he beat out the Socialist prime minister to make it to the run-off vote against president Jacques Chirac.

He was hospitalised near Paris on Saturday after suffering heart trouble, the Le Point news magazine said in a report confirmed later by Le Pen's longtime advisor Lorrain de Saint Affrique.

He has suffered several episodes of ill health in recent years, most recently in February last year, when he was hospitalised after suffering a "minor" stroke.

The former paratrooper was the co-founder of the National Front -- later renamed the National Rally by his daughter Marine -- and spent decades slamming immigration.

While his political fortunes fluctuated sharply over more than half a century -- his unabashed racism leading to him being dubbed the "Devil of the Republic" -- he once boasted that the rise of the far right around Europe showed his ideas had gone mainstream.

His daughter later tried to clean up the image of the party and kicked him out in 2015 over remarks he made that the Holocaust was merely a "detail" of history.

The party has since made significant inroads in both European and French politics.

Marine Le Pen obtained a far-right record 23.15 percent of the vote in 2022 presidential elections, as the party won 89 seats in parliament, becoming the country's main opposition party.

(L.Kaufmann--BBZ)