He confirms being “heavily influenced by the philosophy of the General,” and “converted to Islam around the age of seven.” Bruno Perez, 52 years old, is the UDMF candidate in Marseille for the upcoming local elections. “I am a Gaullist who never drifted,” he affirmed.
On February 12 the UDMF, founded in 2012, announced its presence by running eight candidates in the upcoming elections but a week later decided to only run two in Marseille, Bruno Perez and Houria Medjbar. “I was contacted three weeks ago by the UDMF,” Perez recalls, “I didn’t know this party or its leaders. It’s a friend who put me in contact. He is also my substitute for the election.” He states that now “we are in a hurry,” and that his political stance “has nothing to do with promoting sharia!”
Son of a pied-noir who moved to France in 1962, Perez was stunned by the reaction provoked by his candidature: “In the Muslim Democratic Union of France, we are all Muslims, but that’s not what is most important. Before anything else we are democrats, republicans, and we respect secularism…but we are there to repeat that Muslims of France, is not the Islamic State.”
Perez has a history in politics. In 1995 he campaigned for the RPR. “It’s there that I met Houria Medjbar,” he explained, “who’s now been my friend for twenty years.” A Charles Pasqua supporter, he then followed the former Interior Minister of the Gathering of the French People and presented himself under the label in the 2001 local elections, gaining 3% of the votes.
