Because Marine Le Penleader of the French extreme right, has brought down the Government of Michel Barnieradding their votes to those of the left coalition? Why overthrow years of moderation to remove your party from ostracism until it became the party with the most votes in the last legislative elections? Why now?
Because he fears that the ruling in the trial of the European Parliament’s assistants may prevent him from running in the next presidential elections. It is the political objective of his life, as it was that of his father before, Jean-Marie Le Pen. After three previous failures, Marine could reasonably dream of victory: he leads all the polls. Furthermore, on that occasion he will not have in front of Emmanuel Macronwhich cannot be presented again.
That was my personal interpretation, almost my intuition supported by collateral mentions from analysts of French politics. For example: “There cannot be legislative elections before the month of July, the next presidential election is two and a half years from now. The constitution is an exoskeleton that protects Macron until the last minute. So why trigger a political crisis without returning to the polls? Is the destabilizing judicial calendar an understandable strategy until now? The desire for revenge after disproportionate requests [de la fiscalía]?” This is what the editorial I signed two days ago said. Vincent Tremolet de Villiers in The Figaro.
The editorial of Le Mondepublished hours before the discussion of the motion of censure, was clearer: “The myth of the calm march towards power is over, the veneer of respectability with which [Marine Le Pen] He wanted to clothe his troops. Under the pretext of responding to the anger of her base, she has let her anger explode, which has accompanied her since the requests of the prosecutor’s office in the trial of the European parliamentary assistants of the former National Front. The verdict will be known on March 31. “She is risking her ineligibility.”
The trial of the European Parliament assistants has brought Marine Le Pen and 24 other people to French justice, as well as the far-right party as a legal entity. The accusation is for diversion of European public funds, although the case has been heard before the Paris Correctional Court.
The European Parliament assessed the damage to its coffers at 6.6 million euros between 2009 and 2017. The National Front (now renamed the National Regrouping), then heavily in debt, camouflaged party personnel as assistants to the European Parliament. According to the instruction, the FN launched “in a concerted and deliberate manner a system of diversion” of the 21,000 euros per month that the EU makes available to each deputy to pay their assistants.
A classic among the miscreants of the European Parliament. Only the nerve was supreme. The Front camouflaged Jean-Marie Le Pen’s bodyguard and the person in charge of the party’s graphics as “parliamentary assistants.” According to the accusation, his daughter, president of the party from 2011 to 2022, was “one of the main people responsible for the system, warned by the party treasurer of the need to alleviate the FN’s finances.” Last July, Marine Le Pen agreed to reimburse the European Parliament 330,000 euros.
Le Pen’s defense argued that “parliamentary assistants are not officials of the European Parliament nor do they work for it but rather they are party assistants.” In short, they can be entrusted with the tasks that the party decides. Enough thesis. The European Parliament, which has seen these same practices on several occasions, accumulated evidence against them.
The Prosecutor’s Office demands for Le Pen a sentence of five years in prison, two of them firm that can be served with an electronic bracelet, a fine of 300,000 euros and five years of illegibility with immediate execution. The latter is what especially stung the leader of the extreme right. Immediate execution means that, even if Le Pen filed an appeal, and even if the sentence is not final, she could not run for president. He could, however, keep the seat until all the appeals are heard by the higher courts.
Obviously, the Court can aggravate or lighten the sentence in its ruling of March 31. But Le Pen felt a shock when she heard the public ministry’s request. His dream of reaching the Elysée was faltering. Suddenly so many years of political work to demonize the party, the expulsion of any member who made an anti-Semitic comment, even his own father, ceased to make sense. Au revoir radicalism. Bonjourrespectability. An example of her work as a parliamentarian, at the head of a disciplined, well-dressed troop, with better manners than the rebellious, untied and angry.
Responsible opposition. Understanding with the yellow vests but without demonstrating in the street. Against the pension reform but without participating in the street protests. The reverse of the leader of the extreme left, Jean-Luc Melenchonalways present in all protests with the verb on. Le Pen became normal. She was admitted to a unitary demonstration against the Hamas attacks. Mélenchon chose the opposite side, on the street and in the media. Pro-Palestinian to the core.
El 15 de noviembre, dos días después de la petición de la Fiscalía, Le Pen reaccionó contra una requisitoria “profundamente ultrajante que reclama condenas que supondrían la muerte política con ejecución inmediata”.
Además, se quejaba, no sin algo de razón, porque el líder centrista, François Bayrou, juzgado previamente en otro proceso similar fue absuelto aunque la fiscalía ha recurrido. Bayrou, apunten ese nombre. Es el favorito de las quinielas para ser nombrado por Macron como nuevo primer ministro en sustitución de Barnier, derribado ayer por la moción de censura, la primera desde… 1962, cuando Georges Pompidou, primer ministro de De Gaulle, sufrió la misma suerte. Son los dos únicos casos en los 66 años de vida de la V República.
Por eso algunos ven en la destitución de Barnier más que una crisis de gobierno, una crisis de régimen. Los insumisos de Mélenchon reclaman ya mismo la dimisión de Macron. Le Pen, más sutilmente, también. Ambos extremistas tienen prisa. Mélenchon, porque siempre ha sido un político con urgencias, y más ahora que supera los 70 años. Le Pen porque, si Macron se fuera ya mismo, podría presentarse y, como su aliado Donald Trump, alcanzar el poder, que paraliza la acción de la Justicia.
Por eso Le Pen votó a favor de la moción de censura cuyo texto, atribuido a Mélenchon aunque no es diputado, acusa a Barnier de haber cedido a los “bajos instintos” de la extrema derecha.
El tiempo dirá quien tiene razón. Pero Macron, elegido por sufragio universal, ha dicho que no piensa dimitir. Y, desde el Elíseo, se filtra que quizá designe rápidamente al nuevo primer ministro. A tiempo de recibir a Trump y medio centenar de jefes de Estado y de Gobierno, para la reapertura solemne de Notre Dame, este sábado.
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