The best way to get rid of a political competitor is to send him to jail, with a little help from compliant judges; and to bar him, by the same token, from running for office. That’s what Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan did on March 19. His only serious rival in the 2028 presidential election — Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu — was charged by the police with corruption and complicity in terrorism, and locked up, even before being brought to court.

That’s also what France’s Emmanuel Macron, or at least some of his most devoted friends, may have premeditated regarding Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally and currently a member of the National Assembly, in respect of the 2027 presidential election. Madame Le Pen stands a good chance to be elected, especially as, under the constitution, Macron cannot run for a third consecutive term.

According to an Ifop poll released on March 30, Madame Le Pen gathers 37 percent of the voting intentions. That is way ahead of the Macronist Edouard Philippe, at 21 percent, the ultra-leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, at 12 percent, and the classical conservative Bruno Retailleau, at 11 percent.  

However, 24 hours later, on March 31, a court found her guilty, along with 13 aides, of having misused on behalf of her party’s staff at Paris some European Parliament funds earmarked for European Parliament activities only. As a result, she has been barred from running for office for five years, and sentenced to four years in prison — with the option of home confinement, with two years to be served.

That amounts to a slightly weaker sentence than that sought by the prosecution in November 2024 — but remains harsh. In addition, she must pay a fine of 100,000 euros. Naturally, Madame Le Pen is appealing against what she sees as a politically motivated and disproportionate judgement. However, this is not even the end of the ordeal. 

Under a 2017 law, ineligibility penalties can be enforced provisionally: that is, can be subject to immediate enforcement regardless of any appeal, while in other cases, an appeal has suspensive effect. The court is free to order or not to order the provisional enforcement of the sentence.

In most cases, the court is reluctant to make use of such a singular measure. In 2023, only 3 percent of ineligibility sentences were thus reinforced. Yet Madame Le Pen was not spared. She was barred from seeking an elected office from the very day of the sentence, rather than — if the sentence is confirmed — at some distant point in the future.

Clearly, the name of the game is to bar her from the 2027 ballot, to terminate her political career and to dismantle the National Rally — with a view for Monsieur Macron’s long-term ambitions. The president is not even 50 and will be allowed to run again after a five-years interval.

Moreover, one cannot help but observe that this kind of politico-judicial maneuvering has become commonplace in Mr. Macron’s France. The president owed his first election, in 2017, to a similar affair involving his conservative opponent, François Fillon, who was later sentenced to ten years of ineligibility. Using the same methods, Mr. Macron sidelined an inconvenient ally, François Bayrou, for eight years before finally resigning himself to appointing him prime minister. 

And what of former president Nicolas Sarkozy — another potential candidate for 2027 — who has just been declared ineligible and sentenced to seven years in prison for what are essentially minor infractions? As Thibaut de Montbrial, one of France’s top lawyers, observed, a seven years’ sentence is usually reserved for dangerous drug-traffickers or Isis acolytes.

The question is whether such sleights of hand are compatible with democracy — and, more importantly, whether they might not prove counterproductive. The National Rally voters are not going to vanish into thin air overnight, just because their beloved Marine has been mistreated by what may be perceived as a kangaroo, Turkish-style, judiciary. Moreover, there is a designated successor: Jordan Bardella, a.k.a Monsieur Perfect.

It was perhaps Madame Le Pen’s smartest move to appoint the then 27-year-old Mr. Bardella as party chairman in 2022 and to train him for the job. Now, at almost 30, he seems ready: A tall, slender, young man with an Italian immigrant background and no higher education, he is endowed with a well-structured mind, a sense of strategy, and a knack for assembling strong teams. Working-class French persons identify with him. He impresses the elites.

Above all, Mr. Bardella embodies the new generation of the Rassemblement National — one that claims the legacy of Gaullism and bears no ties to the old far-right. Nothing illustrates this shift more strikingly than the trip he made last week to Jerusalem. 

Invited to an international conference by Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs, Avichai Shikli, Mr. Bardella made a “solemn pledge to fight antisemitism — whether Islamist, far-left or far-right — always, all the time, everywhere.”

A majority of Marine Le Pen’s electorate seems prepared to transfer their support to him, should she be removed from the electoral race. And more voters might easily join him as well.