Or become the French Prime Minister, he is 28 years old and has no university degree
A person born in 1995 is about to become the Prime Minister of a country? And it is a major country in the European Union, France.
It does sound fantastical, but in less than three weeks, it may very well become a reality.
This 1995-born person is named Bardella. In the European Parliament elections held on June 9, the ruling party led by French President Macron was defeated by the French far-right party National Rally led by him, and the party urgently announced the dissolution of the National Assembly.
New elections will be held on June 30 and July 7. Polls currently show that the National Rally is in the lead. If this progress continues, Macron will have no choice but to give the National Rally a chance to govern, and Bardella is expected to be appointed prime minister at that time.
Suddenly, a 28-year-old wanted to be the prime minister, and even many French people were confused: Who is this person? Why did he want to be the prime minister at such a young age?
Bardella grew up in a slum in northeastern Paris, the son of Italian immigrants.
Drugs, poverty and lawlessness... Raised by his mother, Baldela witnessed too much chaos in immigrant communities while growing up.
Friends from different ethnic backgrounds remember him as a video game addict who would spend hours after school playing "Call of Duty" and shooting at enemy combatants on the screen.
"My roots are there, they're part of my and my family's history," Bardella often recalled his childhood in front of the media, and even told about the "dangerous past" when drug dealers hung out outside his apartment.
However, the BBC pointed out that this was a means for Baldella to "market" himself. In fact, his childhood was not that bad. His father also ran a beverage distribution company and was relatively wealthy.
Thanks to this, Bardella moved out of the slums at a very young age and went to a semi-private school that was popular among the middle class.
The Economist magazine also bluntly pointed out that the very things that hindered him in life have become his political selling points.
Influenced by the violent riots in the suburbs of France in 2005, he entered politics at the age of 17, joined the far-right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen, and quickly rose to prominence.
However, from the perspective of a worker, Baldella's resume seems a bit "pale".
After graduating from high school, he studied geography at the Sorbonne in Paris, but dropped out after two years without obtaining a university diploma. Apart from his party work in the National Rally, he had no government work experience.
Bardella once said: "I went into politics because of what I experienced there. What happened there was not normal, and I wanted to prevent it from becoming the norm throughout France."
Chantal Chartrand, Bardella’s teacher, offers this insight into his meteoric rise to the inner circle of the National Alliance in less than a decade: “He looked across the political spectrum and saw where he had the best chance of climbing the ladder.”
Within days of being introduced to Le Pen in 2017, Bardella was appointed by her as the party's spokesperson.
Pascal Hume, a media trainer who worked with Bardella for four years, said Le Pen called Bardella a "little lion" and saw at a glance how this young man with a perfect story of suburban hardships would serve the party.
Although Bardella is only 28 years old, in this era when experience is no longer a decisive factor, age seems to be less important.
For Le Pen, this “little lion” takes the National Rally far beyond its traditional social classes.
As a young man himself, Bardella understands young people's thoughts and ways of communication very well. He also has 1.6 million followers on Tiktok, which makes him a big internet celebrity in France.
If Baldella succeeds in taking office this time, what impact will it have on France?
1. Baldella has set off a "youth storm". Baldella will use his appearance and age to attract more "fans" in the position of prime minister, accumulate popularity for the presidential election three years later, and may even directly run for the election and set a record as the "youngest president".
Second, the EU outlook is not optimistic. As a staunch supporter of the EU, Macron has been working for EU unity since he came to power, but Le Pen proposed "French Brexit" in 2012, and later amended it to withdraw from the eurozone in 2017. Although this idea has faded in recent years, if the National Rally begins to get involved in the core of French power for a long time, "French Brexit" may not be far away.
3. They may target immigrants. Bardella’s personal experience growing up in an immigrant area and his extreme right-wing political attributes mean that the National Alliance is likely to change the current relatively open immigration policy after it takes over the Prime Minister’s Office. He himself had previously advocated restricting the free flow of immigrants by implementing national border controls and revoking EU climate rules during the election.
The final result of this election will be released on July 7. Regarding this election, the Western media described it as: France is facing two completely different futures. The result of this election is bound to have a profound impact on French and even European politics.
With less than three weeks to go, the gears of France's fate have begun to turn.
