Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00For more on this story, we can bring in Andrew Smith, lecturer in liberal arts at Queen Mary
00:05University of London. Thank you so much for joining us on the programme today. Now, the
00:10Le Pen family is no stranger to losses in court. Marine Le Pen is promising to fight this conviction,
00:16but what are her options here? Well, as you say, it's a really challenging one because
00:23this is something where, you know, she has been tried, it's been a long trial,
00:28she's stood alongside 24 other defendants, and they have been found guilty with this extraordinary
00:36punishment that has been brought down. But I think the really important thing is that,
00:39you know, it's not a punishment which has been targeted at her as an individual. It's not because
00:44of her prominence, it's not because of her, you know, political significance. It's because,
00:49as the court said, there's an organised, optimised and systematised embezzlement
00:53of public funds which has taken place. Up to €4.6 million of public money embezzled in around
01:0040 fictitious contracts. But that's really important because I think that's ultimately
01:04what we need to stress here. Any appeal that she wants to make would be about her own political
01:09ambitions. I think the really important thing at the heart of this is we're dealing with an issue
01:14of justice. So there are strategies that you could try to use. Of course, you know, there's an
01:19unclear route of appeal around this, but it could, you know, it might go to the constitutional court,
01:24it might go elsewhere. I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to come in first to tell you that defence.
01:29But ultimately, you know, it could take maybe a year to hear an appeal, and that would still
01:35take us before the 2027 presidential. So I think there will be every avenue explored by the far
01:42right as they try to really fight back against, you know, the legitimate organs of the state
01:47which are enforcing the law of the land. Andrew, I covered the national rally the day after they
01:53lost the last national election in 2022, and there was this mood of celebration. They were just
01:59looking at the figures and showing me that they got the next election, 2027, in the bag, based on
02:05the trends. Can they get there without Marine Le Pen in the picture? It's a really good question.
02:11Just Sunday, there was an e-poll by the Journal de Dimanche, which I think had 34 to 37 percent
02:19of voting intentions in the first round of a, you know, positive 2027 election. Now, that's a
02:25really challenging one because the party has always been, you know, its initials now are RN,
02:30but they could always well have been Le Pen. Right from its very start, this has been a vehicle,
02:36first of all for Marine Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and then for Marine Le Pen herself.
02:41It has all been extremely vertical in terms of how it has been organized. Now, of course, there's
02:46a putative kind of dauphin. There is somebody there waiting, which is Jordan Bardella, the
02:51president of the party, the 31-year-old far-right figure who was the sort of almost designated
02:57prime minister if Le Pen was to become president. Now, it may well seem that the party is set to
03:04look to him, but really there's been a big, I think, blind spot here, which is that this is
03:10a party which has never done well except when it is kind of allied to that one Le Pen sort of
03:19name, that one Le Pen brand, you know, right from the splits, the Bruno May split in the 1990s,
03:25and all that, you know, beforehand as well. It's always been this idea of an internal civil war
03:31is never far away. Now, as a potential appeal rumbles on, as they start to position for who
03:38they will put forward in 2027, I wonder if there may be cracks that start to appear. Bardella is
03:43only 31. There'll be others within the party who think, has he earned his shot? There'll be others
03:47who look at him and say, is he too much trying to unite the right and move away from what the
03:52party was trying to do? There is still a lot of road to run in terms of what might happen
03:56politically. Marine Le Pen has been credited, as you said, of cleaning up the party from the days
04:02of her father. Can she use this conviction to her advantage and potentially boost the support
04:08of the National Rally? Well, she's talked about trying to clean up her party, but she also talked
04:12about, you know, corruption in French politics. She's been, you know, right from 2002 onwards,
04:16she has been a really strong voice saying, oh, there's corruption, oh, it must be pursued,
04:21absolutely to the letter of the law, except maybe not hearing so much of that today. And I think
04:25that's really quite important. If we look at a list of her supporters, it's really a map of
04:31illiberalism. You know, we talk about divided powers between an executive, a legislative,
04:36and a judiciary. And we see this rolling kind of list of support from illiberal parties elsewhere
04:42on the far right, whether it be in Moscow, whether it be, you know, Viktor Orban, whether it be
04:48Matteo Salvini in Italy, et cetera, et cetera, Geert Wilders. And even in, even within France,
04:54you know, we've seen Mélenchon has said, well, we don't like her, but we don't like the ruling
04:58and other kinds of things like that. I think there is really a dividing line here about this
05:03idea of the support for liberal democratic institutions. Those that call it governance
05:08by judges and all the rest of it are pushing back against the foundations of the republic itself.
05:12This is the law being exercised equally for all. And I think that's really important. She's not
05:18the first to face this. She's not the only one to face this type of punishment. And she's facing it
05:23because she was at the head of a system designed to embezzle public funds. And that's really the
05:29important element of this. We've had, as you mentioned, a lot of reaction coming in from
05:34within France and internationally. Let's talk about Eric Ciotti, the politician on the right,
05:41who said that France is not a democracy. We've had reaction coming in from Hungary's Viktor Orban,
05:46who's posting Je suis Marine on his ex account. Will she be viewed as a victim amongst the
05:52European far right? I think she'll certainly be portrayed as a victim amongst the European
05:58far right. And we know this is a system which already has its American mirror in the response
06:04to Trumpist, you know, witch hunt. I mean, essentially what Donald Trump said, that all
06:12the cases against him were witch hunters. Same thing for her. The language of witch hunt,
06:17the language of, you know, being persecuted because people disagree with you. And I think
06:22what's really important is the defence of the law as it is written. And that is really what this
06:27is about. So regardless of the noise that comes from supporters on the liberal wing of the far
06:32right and even the left, I think this is a really important element that actually what needs to
06:37count is justice. Let's talk about the National Rally currently in Parliament right now, because
06:45they're not part of the government, but they have been propping up the government. So what happens
06:50now? Do they still continue playing ball? It's going to be a really challenging one. I've got to presume
06:55part of that's what's happening right now at the headquarters of the National Rally. You know, they've
06:59propped up the government on key issues. They've consistently been trying to normalise their party.
07:04And of course, they face the normal execution of justice as it takes place. But one of the things
07:08they've also done is been calling for, you know, new legislative election and pushing back against
07:14the Prime Minister on key issues. Now, the thing they do not want, if this ruling stands,
07:20and it isn't appealed very quickly, is fresh legislative election, because that would mean
07:24that Mary Le Pen would very possibly lose her seat, very likely lose her seat, because she
07:28couldn't take part in it. She maintains her mandate right now as a deputy, but she would not if there
07:34were fresh legislatives. So the party is going to have to pivot in terms of its strategy in the
07:39Assembly, in terms of what it's trying to do. And it will presumably continue to try and present
07:44itself as being somehow victimised and, you know, the kind of cry bully strategy of the far right
07:50that we've seen so often in terms of the National Assembly, causing chaos, profiting from it and
07:56trying to sit back when the going gets tough in order not to play a constructive role, but a
08:01destructive role in terms of criticising and maligning democratic political institutions
08:06of the Republic. Andrew Smith, thank you very much for your analysis today. Thank you.