 |
| Les trois candidats les plus poplaires dans les sondages, Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron et François Fillon / Source: Reinformation.tv |
Cases of misuse of power keep piling up on major French candidates – and they could not care less.
Fictitious jobs, partiality, hiding of property assets: the unofficial program of the 2017 French presidential election consists of suspicions at best, judicial investigations at worst. The main right-wing leader up until recently, François Fillon, has been found to employ his wife Penelope and his two children as parliamentary assistants – although Penelope told the Sunday Telegraph in 2007 that she had never been her husband’s assistant. He is, as of today, third in the polls with 21% of voting intentions.
The top two candidates also have dirty hands: Marine Le Pen, who is leading in the polls with 26% for the first round, is under scrutiny for misuse of European parliamentary assistants hired to work on her campaign. The National Front is also suspected of setting up a fraudulent system to finance the party’s campaigns of 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015 – ever since Marine Le Pen became its President. As for the young pro-business candidate Emmanuel Macron, now number two in the polls with 25%, he is suspected of partiality towards the Havas communication counsel company, and conflict of interests with the major Servier laboratory.
It does not stop here: the investigative newspaper “Le Canard Enchaîné” recently published that François Fillon had hidden a 50,000 euro loan (52,725 dollars) from the High Authority for transparency in public life (HATVP), a new and independent anti-corruption body. The Le Pen family has also understated their property assets to the HATVP, sometimes up to two-thirds. If these claims are found to be true, Marine Le Pen could risk up to three years in jail, a 45,000-euro fine (47,432 dollars), and 10 years of ineligibility. Macron has also understated his property money for two years, but was smarter about it and managed to get out of tax adjustment by striking a deal with the tax agency and spontaneously sending a corrective statement for the two understated years.
Are candidates worried at all? It does not look like it. Ahead of his indictment on March 15th, François Fillon claimed during a press conference that he had never been treated fairly by the justice system and that he would “continue until the end” in any case. Marine Le Pen also claims – as is her habit – to be prey to the media’s and judges’ bias against her, and that she would answer to police and judicial summons only after the presidential election. As for Macron, he is suspected of partiality, conflict of interest and– only turbid waters which have not yet turned into a typhoon for him.
Satirical TV shows joke about the morality of this whole situation: “Le Petit Journal” – a French spin-off of the Daily Show - posted on Facebook on March 1st “It is official: François Fillon could not care less. Actually, the whole French electoral season entered a new era that we will call “the era of the ‘could not care less.’”
The satirical “Groland” show also posted a humoristic video two days later, showing actors getting away with larceny or speeding tickets by applying the philosophy of French presidential candidates: if you say “no matter what, I will continue until the end” or “I don’t want to,” according to the Fillon and Le Pen jurisprudence policemen will not be able to force you to comply and will have to wait for you to finish.
This article was written for this blog only.
