Opinion
A Candidate in an Ankle Monitor: The Le Pen Question France Cannot Outsource to Judges
The Le Pen candidacy is now a legal paradox wearing a campaign badge. Days after a court sentenced her to a court-ordered electronic monitor for embezzlement, Marine Le Pen confirmed she will run for the French presidency next year anyway.
Two truths collide here, and this editorial declines to pretend otherwise. The first: courts must be able to convict powerful politicians without being accused of coups. The evidence was heard, the verdict rendered, and no democracy survives leaders who are above its laws. The second: elections must be decided by voters, not prosecutors. A democracy that habitually removes popular candidates by legal means soon convinces millions that ballots are decorative.
Why the Le Pen candidacy tests everyone’s principles
Watch how quickly the arguments switch sides. Many who cheered lawfare against politicians they oppose now discover due-process scruples, and vice versa. The honest position is uncomfortable: the conviction deserves respect, and so does the right of French voters to weigh it themselves. An ankle monitor is information for the electorate, not a substitute for it.
This page holds no candle for Le Pen’s politics. Our readers know where this newspaper stands on the nativism that often wears secularism as a costume, a theme our columnists return to today. But principles are only principles when they protect people we dislike. As international coverage notes, France now runs a live experiment every democracy is watching.
The demand
Let the sentence stand. Let the candidacy proceed as the law allows. And let the argument be won where durable arguments are won, in daylight, on the record, at the ballot box. Anything else hands the next demagogue, of any flavour, a martyrdom too cheap to refuse.
This is an editorial; judgments are the newspaper’s own. Fact basis: Le Pen sentenced this week to a court-ordered electronic monitor for embezzlement; confirmed 2027 presidential run (WORLD news roundup, 9 July 2026).