Marine Le Pen: RN and Darmanin defy justice

The day after the requisitions demanding the ineligibility of Marine Le Pen, the National Rally continues to attack justice head-on, criticisms echoed by the former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin accused of fueling the “anti-system” discourse of the extreme right.

“Support Marine! Defend democracy”: the flame party did not hesitate to launch a petition on Thursday on the social network to eliminate the voice of the real opposition” and to “circumvent the democratic process”.

Without specifying that according to the law, the offense of embezzlement of public funds is automatically accompanied by a penalty of ineligibility for an elected official.

At the trial of the parliamentary assistants, the prosecution, judging Marine Le Pen at the “center” of an “organized system” aimed at making the European Parliament the “cash cow” of the RN, pronounced severe requisitions against her on Wednesday: five years in prison including three suspended, 300,000 euros fine and five years of ineligibility with provisional execution – that is to say with immediate application even in the event of appeal – which could eject him from the presidential race if judges follow prosecutors.

Reviving Trumpist accents, the deputy Jean-Philippe Tanguy (RN) denounced “almost fanatical requisitions”, the vice-president of the party Sébastien Chenu accusing the prosecution of being “at the service of a political mission”.

Apart from the extreme right, most leaders of the right and center remained discreet in their reactions and hardly went in the direction of the RN, with the notable exception of the former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin who judges “ deeply shocking that Marine Le Pen is deemed ineligible and, thus, cannot stand before the vote of the French.

“If the court judges that she must be condemned, she cannot be so electorally, without the expression of the people,” he declared on Wednesday on between the “elites” and the vast majority of our fellow citizens.

This position goes down badly in the government camp. The Minister of Justice Didier Migaud, while refusing to comment on an individual case, recalled that “the magistrates are independent” and “judge based on the law passed by the legislator”.

Gérald Darmanin “should not have said that”, said more directly the president (LR) of Hauts-de-France Xavier Bertrand who is nevertheless one of his close friends. “Or he follows through with his thoughts and submits a bill to eliminate ineligibility,” he said. “But in the meantime, the law exists, it applies to everyone and no one is above the law.”

On the left, this “breach of the principle of separation of powers” ​​was criticized by the boss of the PS Olivier Faure as a “big embarrassing wink from someone who pretends to pity the woman whose electorate he dreams of recovering”.

Some Horizons elected officials, such as the mayor of Nice Christian Estrosi, for their part, supported Darmanin by calling on Parliament “to take up the automaticity of ineligibility penalties”, “a dangerous principle” according to them, even if the The right and the extreme right do not fail to claim this automaticity for ordinary delinquency.

“Let us stop with the denial of democracy, to act as if the RN would not be able to present a candidate: they have an alternative candidate, his name is Bardella, he is just waiting for that,” said Xavier Bertrand.