France may be teetering on the verge of national snap elections, but the poll-topping sovereigntist leader Marine Le Pen is banned from even standing, a Paris court has confirmed, over a conviction her supporters say is a case of politically targeted lawfare.
The French Council of State, the body of top lawyers which provides legal advice to the government and supreme court, has rejected an appeal by National Rally leader Marine Le Pen to have her “ineligibility” order overturned, reports Le Figaro. The order that was imposed on the politician in March by a judge is considered unusual and controversial because unlike normal criminal punishments, it is being imposed immediately, despite the appeals process to have the conviction itself overturned not having been exhausted.
Supporters of Le Pen have called the move to block her from office a nakedly political move to get her off the ballot at any cost, at a time where her party leads the polls in France. Le Pen herself had said it is a bid by the judiciary to “steal” the next election.
Indeed, it is stated that many Members of the European Parliament break the particular rule Le Pen is accused of having contravened, yet almost none are ever punished for it, leading to a perception the law is only applied to shut down politicians who threaten the European Union itself.
Le Pen’s actual appeal against the conviction for what was said to be campaign financing fraud will take place early next year from January, meaning if the judgement is overturned then her eligibility to run for office will return in time for the next planned French Presidential election. However, crucially, France is undergoing a period of intense political instability, with governments collapsing within months, and as of this month even within hours of being founded.
The root of this instability is a deeply divided parliament with no single dominant party or faction, and no possibility for coalition building as the three major blocs come from totally exclusionary political positions. This has led for sustained and repeated calls for fresh national elections, and even for President Emmanuel Macron himself to step down and for the nation to choose a new leader.
This could be the key to returning to stability and avoided, as has been widely discussed, an end to the French Fifth Republic to make way for a whole new constitution and electoral system. Yet fresh elections while the leader of the country’s first-place-polling party, the National Rally, is banned from even running could very well intensify the crisis by further eroding the public’s trust in the quality of their democracy.
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