PARIS, March 15, 2010 (AFP) - French far-right leader Jean Marie Le Pen on Monday celebrated his anti-immigrant party's surprise strong score in regional polls, insisting the party was a resurgent force in national politics.
    "It is the phoenix rising from the ashes," said the 81 year-old founder of party, who gave Europe a scare in 2002 when he beat off the Socialist candidate in the first round vote for the French presidency.
    Now with a score of nearly 12 percent in Sunday's regional vote, "the National Front (FN) has returned to the forefront of French politics" he told a televised news conference at his party headquarters in Nanterre, west of Paris.
    The score confounded analysts' predictions and qualified the FN to enter party lists in 12 of France's 22 mainland regions for the runoff on Sunday against Sarkozy's UMP party and the Socialists who won Sunday's first round.
    The National Front's strong showing came as French voters were reeling from a year-long recession that has sent unemployment soaring and followed a public debate on national identity that exposed fears about immigration.
    It marked a resurgence of the far-right from its weak score of 6.8 percent in European elections last year and the 4.3 percent won by Le Pen in the 2007 presidential vote.
    Weighed down by financial problems and an eroding support base, the National Front was seen as a spent force in French politics over the past years, with many analysts predicting its demise.
    President Nicolas Sarkozy successfully managed to tap into the far-right's support during his 2007 campaign for the presidency with promises to tackle immigration and crime and create jobs.
    Nearly three years into Sarkozy's mandate, "all the economic and social indicators are in the red," Le Pen said, complaining of "massive immigration," high unemployment and worsening security in France.
    Its score "means that the far-right is not dead," said Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on the far-right at the French Institute of Strategic and International Relations.
    "It is not a party of government, but it is a party that can hobble the political system. It is a party of protest."
    Camus said the result also reflected the discontent of far-right voters who massively defected from the National Front during the 2007 presidential vote to back Nicolas Sarkozy.
    "They were won over by his promises of restoring the value of work and his message on law and order. Nowadays, they don't connect with him," said Camus.
    Le Pen, who at 81 may be making his last run, campaigned on his signature themes of halting immigration and opposing European integration, which he says pose a threat to the French way of life.
    The party was also able to capitalise on the government's national identity debate in which citizens were asked to define what it means to be French on Internet forums and in public gatherings.
    The debate at times gave way to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rants.
    President Nicolas Sarkozy's government is also weighing measures to ban the wearing of the full Islamic veil in France, which is home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority.
    During its campaign, the FN sought to tap into fears about Islam when it released a poster that read "No to Islamism".
    The veteran politician is grooming his daughter Marine Le Pen to take over the helm of the party founded in 1972 and her strong showing in the economically depressed northern Pas-de-Calais region bolstered her standing.