Chirac has been grandstanding in pursuit of a neo-Gaullist dream of France leading a rassemblement of the non-American world.
Joël Rumello of the local La Provence newspaper says the FN and its offshoot, the Rassemblement Bleu Marine (a play on Le Pen's name and the colour navy blue), is playing a long game in the region.
It is unlikely that many French politicians will be eager to cut their old, profitable party affiliations for an untried rassemblement of pro-European liberals in a country that voted such a resounding no to Europe's constitution.
As HuffPost France notes, Rassemblement National Populaire was an avowedly racist, fascist party with a symbol that closely resembles the Nazi's swastika flag.
Another issue with "Rassemblement National" is that a smaller French right-wing party already has that name, and its leaders accused Le Pen of "astonishing amateurism" for trying to steal its banner.
As Prime Minister Mitterand chose Jacques Chirac, who lead a party, the Rassemblement pour la Republique, or RPR, that he calls a Gaullist party.
As early as in June 1949, a few months after the publication of the Anthology, Gabriel d'Arbousier, then a prominent African intellectual and politician (he was a member of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain Party African Democratic Party which was then close to the French Communist Party), published a reaction to Senghor's book.
To consolidate his regime, Eyadema founded a political party, the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais in 1969, and gave his rule a form of constitutionality as a one-party state.
In 1988 the party was renamed the Democratic Constitutional Rally (Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique; RCD), marking a break with the Neo-Destour Bourguibist past and movement toward a new commitment to democracy.
He was elected to the Senate in 1948 as a member of de Gaulle's Rassemblement du Peuple Français and was reelected as a Social Republican (the party's new name) in 1955.
The next evolution of SAA was its transformation into an inter-African movement populist party, Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA) that was formally established at a meeting in October 1946, in Bamako (Mali).
