Is So-Called “Lawfare” a Threat to Democracy?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

Has so-called “lawfare,” where politicians have been barred from running for office after being singled out and convicted of crimes, become antithetical to democratic norms? Two recent European cases come to mind.

In late March, France’s Marine Le Pen was banned from running for political office over the next five years, including the 2027 presidential race, after a Paris court convicted her of embezzlement. The National Rally (RN) party leader, who currently sits as a member of the French National Assembly, was found guilty of using European Parliament money to pay staff who were actually working for the RN.

During her time as a member of the European Parliament between 2004 and 2017, Le Pen and her team paid RN staff with funds that should have gone to European parliamentary aides.

A Paris court also handed Le Pen, who was the frontrunner for the next presidential election, a four-year prison sentence with two years suspended, to be served under house arrest, and a $154,000 fine. Her party was ordered to pay about $3.12 million in fines for the almost $6.9 million that it was accused of embezzling.

Bénédicte de Perthuis, the court’s president, said that Le Pen had committed “a serious and lasting attack on the rules of democratic life in Europe.” While not able to participate in future elections, she will be able to continue to serve her current post as a parliamentary member representing Pas-de-Calais. She has appealed the verdict.

Le Pen had previously run three times for president of France, with the most recent bid in 2022 when she was defeated by President Emmanuel Macron. She was able to obtain over 41 per cent of the vote. According to previous polls, Le Pen was on track to replace Macron, who cannot seek a third term in office. She has called it a “witch hunt.”

“Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly condemned: It was French democracy that was is being executed,” RN President Jordan Bardella said. The fact that it involved a five-year ban on running for office, coupled with the judge’s insistence that this part of his ruling be immediately enforced rather than only after appeals have been exhausted, made it appear even more partisan.

Bardella took over from Le Pen as president of the party in 2022 and led the RN to victory in the 2024 European election in France. He also managed to send a record number of parliamentarians to the National Assembly after Macron called a snap election just weeks later. If Bardella runs as the party’s presidential candidate in 2027 and wins, he might conceivably still be able to appoint Le Pen as his prime minister.

The verdict sent shock waves to many politicians on the right. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban condemned the verdict. “Je suis Marine!” a post from Orban’s X account read. Even President Donald Trump weighed in. The conviction was “another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website. Elon Musk drove home the point: “Free Le Pen!” Musk echoed on X. Vice President JD Vance and others have also accused liberals in America of using the law to quash democratic choice.

The conviction of Le Pen is the latest stage of Europe’s “descent into the abyss of totalitarianism,” according to former Greece finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. He called the charges “laughable and ludicrous,” and to make them “a jailable offence and also a reason to bar her from running in the presidential election” was “mindboggling. Either the law applies to everyone, or it applies to no one.”

It is obvious that Le Pen has been sentenced for something that often results in a slap on the hand. For example, Christine Lagarde, today the president of the European Central Bank, escaped punishment and kept her job as managing director of the International Monetary Fund despite a conviction in 2016 on negligence charges over a state payout made while she served as France’s finance minister in 2008. Le Pen’s case, though, demonstrates the left’s hatred for anything that challenges their hegemony

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who is the head of the populist party Lega, alleged that the French government is “afraid” of the voters’ judgement. “In Paris they have condemned Marine Le Pen and would like to exclude her from political life – an ugly film that we are also seeing in other countries such as Romania,” he stated on X. “The ruling against Marine Le Pen is a declaration of war by Brussels.”

Varoufakis, too, criticized the electoral ban of Romania’s right-wing presidential frontrunner, Calin Georgescu, labelling that decision “preposterous.” He compared that ban with the Le Pen conviction, stating: “The Romanian case was the dress rehearsal. Now, they’ve moved on to Le Pen.”

Last November Georgescu, who is no fan of NATO and admires Russian president Vladimir Putin, won the first round of Romania's presidential election with 23 per cent of the vote. Then the constitutional court scrapped the entire election in an unprecedented move, citing intelligence that Georgescu’s online campaign had been helped by Russia. A do-over balloting will be held in May, but Georgescu has been barred from participating. We have yet to see how this will play out.