Le Pen guilty of embezzlement

Bet she’s going to look even more sour faced than usual :rofl::rofl:

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Exactly, and all the hard right snout in trough authoritarians all over the world will scream and shout about how meeeeeeeeean the judges are and how it’s not justice unless it goes their way.

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I hear Viktor Orban is already screeching.

Friends like that MLP may be wishing she had less of.

Being a convicted person hasn’t done Trump much damage.

Because the authors of the constitution didn’t think it a bar to the highest office. Not sure exactly what they were smoking but that’s how they felt. I guess the world was a different place in 1787.

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Disturbing how many French public figures from across the political spectrum, while not contesting that a crime has been committed, are focussing on le Pen’s sentence being ‘a challenge to democracy’ or ‘thwarting the will of the people.’

OTOH Bordello was too young to be implicated and remains eligible to stand in 2027 (by when he’ll be a bit more mature, if not actually a grown-up) so it’s not as if the NR is being banned.

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It’s a protection against one government convicting a potential opposition leader in order to have them permanently barred from standing and taking office.

I have no love for the far right and hope that I’m wrong, but I think this is going to buy France a lot of trouble in the next few years.

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I am horrified as Perpignan is twinned with my home city of LancasterI am wondering how thisvwill affect relations between them.

I imagine that they’ll still be prepared to be twinned with Lancaster …

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I think Lancaster’s unlikely to go down the pan the way Perpignan has - a lot of the latter’s inner city is a picturesque dump and these days Lancaster (and certainly the surrounding area) probably has better restaurants than Pep. Wonder if that butcher in the former’s town centre still sells grey squirrel meat?

Hmmm, has that threat ever materialised - as opposed to, Oh I don’t know, an actual convicted felon manipulating the whole process to keep himself out of jail?

They do like to play the martyr, and this gives them ample opportunity.

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An individual and some of her supporters have been convicted of a crime, but their party and its president have not been proscribed. Also neither Le Pen nor her convicted colleagues have been barred from office ie. they retain their current posts, but rather they’ve been barred from standing for future office.

Unfortunately, for me just as Vance seems more potentially dangerous than Trump, so too with Bardella and Le Pen.

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Some countries have rules barring convicted individuals from holding office, and it’s been used there in the past. If it WERE a possibility in the US then I’m sure it would have been tried - Trump as a corrupt president is not unique, but is certainly trying to be so.

Oh, wow. That sounds awfully like there may have been a lot more embezzlement going on than anyone has been convicted of. I am shocked.

Is Mme Le Pen now forbidden from being elected to any public office forever, and not just for the 2027 elections?

She can’t stand either for her Pas de Calais Parliamentary seat at the next election (for any election in the next 5 years) , nor can she run for President in the next election/or succeeding Presidential elections during the same 5 year period, though there is only likely to be the one, in 2027.

Worth noting that around a dozen French politicians received similar immediate bans from standing in future elections during 2024, (according to legal specialists on France Info) though they were obviously not as high profile as Le Pen.

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Clear explanation … Democracy is alive and well…

Today’s Editorial in Ouest France journal

https://www.ouest-france.fr/politique/marine-le-pen/editorial-marine-le-pen-condamnee-un-jugement-nest-pas-un-deni-de-democratie-bf52cf1a-0e31-11f0-ab9e-ddf89dc6d8e3

What about equality, which is one of the mainstays that France proudly proclaims?
It should be seen that equality before the law is in due process.
RN should have, or probably did, that what they were doing was illegal and all these protestations and hand wringing that France’s justice system is disregarding the will of the people and tge democratic process is typical of all of these extreme right wing parties.
Fortunately, Elon Musk has put his oar in to lend Marine support and France detests Musk.

sorry Jane if I expressed myself poorly…

The Editorial makes it quite clear that those who break the Law should not complain when/if they are judged to be guilty… :wink:

(Equality is alive and well… just like everyone else, Le Pen is not above the Law…)

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Exactly.

Seems that ‘creative accounting’ is a bit carry-on-until/unless-you’re-caught.

I do like that France’s legal system judges all the same. A bit disingenuous of MLP to say it is the law courts who are now disenfranchising her supporters by barring her from running in 2027. ‘If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime!’

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