On the day an opinion poll predicted that Marine Le Pen would thrash any political opponent at the next presidential election, a judge in Paris virtually
On the day an opinion poll predicted that Marine Le Pen would thrash any political opponent at the next presidential election, a judge in Paris virtually banned her from taking part. The president of the court handed down a harsh sentence that left not only the veteran nationalist politician reeling, but all of France’s political class.
Even her opponents on the moderate right, and her main adversary on the radical left, showed discomfort with the increasing influence of the judiciary on French political life. However, they may not agree with Le Pen’s sneer, a few hours after the verdict, that “in the nation of human rights, judges have put in place a system we thought reserved for authoritarian regimes.”
A lawmaker for Le Pen’s party, the National Rally, went as far as to compare France to Turkey, where the politicized judiciary has arrested the leader of the opposition, the mayor of Istanbul, to prevent him from defeating dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the next election.
But these and other exaggerations struck a chord with many French people interviewed at random all over the country after the sentences had been handed down against Le Pen and 23 other members of her party for embezzling taxpayers’ funds from the European Parliament. Admirers of Le Pen fumed at a “plot” by allegedly left-wing judges against their heroine, who, at 56 years of age, was getting ready for her fourth attempt at reaching the Elysée Palace in two years’ time. This time around, chances of success seemed better than ever. A poll by Ipsos published March 31, a few hours before the stiff sentences were read out, predicted Le Pen would get around 37 percent of the vote in the first round against any opponent. In second came a politician of the moderate right with 21 percent.
So, is this the end of a career that has lasted for more than 30 years for the woman who evicted her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, from the party he had founded in 1972 for his repeated racist and ant-Semitic rants? Bruised but unbowed, Mrs.
