“Relenty” 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, November 13 on the right of the political spectrum, up to 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 ask for 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 leaving the requisitions. Two and a half years before the 2027 presidential election, the prosecution is showing “a desire to deprive the French of the ability to vote for whoever 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 at the “center” of an “organized system” aimed at making the European Parliament the “cash cow” of the 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.
“#ISupportMarine”
“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 to deprive millions of French people of their vote in 2027. This is an attack on democracy,” he insisted. 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.
This Thursday morning, the vice-president of the RN Sébastien Chenu denounced “a prosecution serving a political mission”, and an attempt to “take it out of the political game” for the 2027 presidential election. “In what country would we live in which we would prevent the main politician, the most popular politician in the polls, Marine Le Pen, (…) from being able to run,” he criticized on RMC-BFMTV.
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, referring to François Fillon who was handicapped in his presidential race in 2017 by suspicions of his wife’s fictitious employment. “The democratic destiny of our nation must be played out at the ballot box and not in politicized courtrooms,” insisted 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 polls, not elsewhere”. “If the court judges that she must be condemned, she cannot be so electorally, without the expression of the People,” he declared on 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 one whose electorate he dreams of recovering” and denounces a “big breach of the principle separation of powers.
“What a scandal! Marine Le Pen must be able to run in the presidential election,” argued Sara Knafo, MEP from the Zemmourist Reconquête party, with sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan also seeing a desire 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. Before the announcement of the requisitions, one of her close assured him: “She expects the worst, nuclear fire.”