Marine Le Pen, the common sensical and gritty leader of French politics who is almost certain to win the next presidential polls in 2027 has been sentenced to 'stay out of the French presidential elections'.
Two days ago a French court handed down a weird sentence on Madame Le Pen. She was sentenced to four years jail for "corruption", of which two years have been suspended. The remaining two years will be under 'house arrest' where she will have to stay inside her house while wearing an electronic ankle bracelet for two years.
(This is a very bad mistake because for the next two years Mdm Le Pen can proudly show off her ankle bracelet to the Media and make the government of Emmanuele Macron look really stupid. They are really going to regret this. It is really bad optics).
The case against her is equally silly. The case against her began EIGHT years ago in 2017 when Mdm Le Pen was accused of
"improperly using European Parliament funds to pay her parliamentary assistants for work they allegedly did not perform. The amount of money involved in these allegations was approximately €340,000. The charges were related to payments made by the European Parliament to fund the salaries of assistants to MEPs (Members of the European Parliament). Mdm Le Pen denied the allegations, stating that the payments were legitimate and part of the political work of her party".
In the European system, a really confused system of dual-government, political parties stand for elections at least TWICE. One is election to the local Parliament like Parliament in Holland or the Bundestag in Germany. Then they also stand for elections to the European Parliament which is based in Brussels in Belgium.
So the same politician, belonging to the same party, being located in the same constituency, in the same country, working from the same office or premises, using the same staff but answers to two different Parliaments - one in his or her own country and the other one being the European Parliament located in Brussels.
The European Parliament gives budget allocations to its Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to run their offices and campaigns. So the charges against Mdm Le Pen (since 2017) was that she had used the 340,000 Euros from her allocation to pay the salaries of her office staff but the staff were not doing the work exclusively for the European Parliament. They were doing other work as well, but still related to her party the National Rally. This is where the corruption charges came in.
Yesterday I heard a comment that there are 705 Members of the European Parliament throughout the 31 members of the European Union. If each and everyone of those 705 MEPs were audited for the usage of European Parliament funds perhaps all of them can be sentenced to jail for the same "offense".
All this is just a lame excuse. Mdm Le Pen is strongly anti-establishment. Worse than that her party has swept the 2024 European Parliament polls in France. Her National Rally has won the most number of French seats to the European Parliament.
In the 2024 European Parliament elections, the National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN), secured 30 out of France's 81 seats, representing 31.37% of the vote.
And Mdm Le Pen is well positioned to win the French presidential polls in 2027. The British poodle Macron's latest popularity poll in France is now at below 21% !!
Mdm Le Pen has committed an even greater sin - she is pro Russia and anti EU. She must be stopped at all costs.
But even the corrupt French courts (yes they are corrupt) could not be too hard on her - two years suspended sentence, two more years house arrest wearing an ankle bracelet and a 100,000 Euro fine.
But that is not what they wanted or care about too much. The French court also slapped a FIVE YEAR ban on Mdm Le Pen from running for public office. This can keep her out of the presidential race - forever. This is what they really wanted.
Mdm Le Pen will appeal her ridiculous conviction. She may yet succeed. My advice to her is keep showing that ankle bracelet to the French Media. Really embarrass the French government. Make them look stupid.
She should renovate her house and fix some iron bars on her windows. Then the French Media can take pictures of her locked up behind bars inside her own house. In France even your own home can be turned into a prison.
