“Relentlessly” against Marine Le Pen and “attack on democracy”: the requisitions of the prosecution in the trial of the RN parliamentary assistants sparked a wave of protests on Wednesday on the right of the political spectrum, including the former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin.
The leader of the National Rally, three-time presidential candidate (2012, 2017 and 2022), sees in the call for her ineligibility an intention to stop her political rise.
“The only thing that interested the prosecution was Marine Le Pen to be able to request her exclusion from political life and then the National Rally to be able to ruin the party”, affirmed the head of the RN deputies after the requisitions.
Two and a half years before the 2027 presidential election, the park manifests “a desire to deprive the French of the ability to vote for who they wish”, she asserted.
The prosecution requested five years in prison, including two years in prison, a fine of 300,000 euros and five years of ineligibility against Marine Le Pen, judging her “centre” of a “organized system” aimed at making the European Parliament the “cash cow” you RN.
If the court follows the prosecution, the penalty of ineligibility, accompanied by provisional execution, would be applicable from the conviction, including in the event of appeal.
“The prosecution is not in justice: it is in relentlessness and revenge against Marine Le Pen”, adds the president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, on the social network X.
“His scandalous requisitions aim to deprive millions of French people of their vote in 2027. It is an attack on democracy,” he insisted.
“In the polls”
Just like the president of the party, many RN elected officials have published photos of themselves with Marine Le Pen on X under the hashtag #JeSoutiensMarine.
Same indignation among the other components of the nationalist right and the French extreme right.
“The course of French democracy must not be confiscated from voters again”launched Eric Ciotti, evoking the precedent of François Fillon who had to give up running for president in 2017 on suspicion of his wife's fictitious employment.
“The democratic destiny of our nation must be decided at the ballot box and not in politicized courtrooms,” hammered the former president of the Republicans who joined Marine Le Pen's camp in June.
A rare voice outside the field of the extreme right to speak out, Gérald Darmanin also judged that “Fighting Madame Le Pen is done at the ballot box, not elsewhere.”
“If the court judges that she must be condemned, she cannot be sentenced electorally, without the expression of the People,” he declared on “dig” plus “the difference between the elites and the vast majority of our fellow citizens”.
A position openly criticized by the boss of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, who sees it as a “big embarrassing wink from someone who pretends to pity the woman whose electorate he dreams of winning back” and denounces a “big breach of the principle of separation of powers”.
“What a scandal! Marine Le Pen must be able to run in the presidential election”, pleaded for her part Sara Knafo, European deputy of the Zemmourist Reconquête party, the sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan also seeing in it a desire to “to muzzle the French people”.
Comforted by the constant rise of the RN in recent years, including after the dissolution of the National Assembly which followed the European elections in June, Marine Le Pen is now aiming for 2027.
