Marine Le Pen seeing her presidential ambitions slipping away? While the RN MP for Pas-de-Calais has until now portrayed herself as her camp’s natural candidate for 2027, the prosecution’s indictment in the case of the parliamentary assistants of the Front National (formerly Rassemblement National) is harsh on the woman who has already appeared three times before the French people. On Wednesday, the prosecution called for a fine of 300,000 euros and two sentences: five years’ imprisonment, two of which may be converted into a firm sentence, and a five-year ban on standing for election.

This request is all the more difficult to accept in the RN ranks, as the public prosecutor has asked the court to attach a provisional execution to this last point, meaning that it would apply immediately even if Marine Le Pen appeals. This would hamper her ambitions for the presidential elections in 2027 and would block his re-election to the National Assembly in the event of another dissolution in a few months’ time.

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At the end of the hearing, the nationalist leader denounced, in a cold anger, “a desire on the part of the public prosecutor to deprive her and the French people of the ability to vote for whomever they wish.” “The only thing he was interested in was Marine Le Pen so he could demand her exclusion from political life and the Rassemblement National to ruin the party.”she went on, in front of a swarm of journalists, in reference to the 4.3 million euro fine (2 million euros suspended) requested by the prosecutors against him. And the two-time presidential finalist of“hope” that the court, which will reserve judgment until the end of November, “will not follow” these requisitions.

“A relentless effort

Pretending not to be “surprised” by the latter, Marine Le Pen said “to have made up her mind after a few days of hearings”.. Before once again criticizing the public prosecutor, whom she described as“outrageous” and “violent”. These strong words echoed all the indictments, which called for all defendants to be disqualified, “modulated” according to the responsibilities of each individual. The public prosecutor has called for eighteen months’ imprisonment, including six months’ imprisonment and three years’ ineligibility, for party number two Louis Aliot; ten months’ suspended imprisonment and one year’s ineligibility for RN spokesman Julien Odoul; and eighteen months’ suspended imprisonment and two years’ ineligibility for Marine Le Pen’s sister, Yann Le Pen.

Supported by a photo of himself and Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella criticized on X a “relentlessness” and a “revenge against Marine Le Pen”. “His outrageous requisitions aim to deprive millions of French people of their vote in 2027. This is an attack on democracy.the RN president quipped. With the presidential election probably on his mind, his counterpart at Reconquête Éric Zemmour took up his mantra of “government of judges.” And the fourth man in the 2022 election adds: “Whatever our disagreements, it’s certainly not up to the courts to decide who can be a candidate.”.

As for her former poster girl for the European elections, Marion Maréchal, she passed the buck to the judges. In the event of ineligibility, Marine Le Pen’s niece considers that the latter “will once again decide on the presidential election poster in place of the French people”.. After the Fillon affair in 2017, this would be, according to her “a new denial of democracy.” A rhetoric also used by the RN’s new ally: Eric Ciotti. For the Alpes-Maritimes MP, “the course of French democracy must not again be confiscated from the electorate.” “Our nation’s democratic destiny must be played out at the ballot box, not in politicized courtrooms.”.