France's National Front has reportedly dropped its candidate for municipal elections, Anne-Sophie Leclere after she compared the country's black Justice Minister Christiane Taubira to a monkey.
The FN candidate for Rethel in the northeastern Ardennes region, also owned up to a photo-montage showing Taubira alongside a baby monkey which was posted on her Facebook page.
According to the Huffington Post, during an interview for France 2's Envoye Special (Special Correspondent) programme, Leclere said that she would prefer to see Taubira 'in a tree swinging from the branches rather than in government'.
The National Front's vice-president Florian Philippot said that choosing Leclere as a candidate had been a 'casting error'.
The report said that in light of the growing outrage and concern over the rise of racism and xenophobia in Europe, the party has increasingly taken a hard line on slurs expressed by its members.
Last month, the party dropped another candidate for posting a photo on his Facebook page showing a burning Israeli flag with the caption 'This is France', an allusion to the country's large Muslim community, the biggest in western Europe, apart from expelling activists making bigoted public statements, the report added.
