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'France is not like the US or Brazil, where trials are highly politicised and nobody believes in justice'
FRANCE 24 English
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4 months ago
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00:00
We can now bring in Renaud Foucault, Associate Professor at Lancaster University.
00:05
Thank you so much for joining us on the programme today.
00:08
Your reaction to what came out of the courtroom in Paris earlier?
00:12
I think my main reaction is from a purely institutional reason.
00:17
For France, it's actually pretty good news.
00:19
It's the fact that you have this person who is the former president,
00:22
who had the ear of Emmanuel Macron.
00:24
It's the first person that the future prime minister, Le Cornu,
00:28
has met before forming his government.
00:30
It's really the important person in the centre-right in France.
00:34
This person is not too important to avoid being convicted.
00:37
It's not too important to avoid being sent to jail.
00:39
So why is it so important?
00:41
Because in the next, in the coming presidential election in France,
00:44
the frontrunner, Marine Le Pen, is also herself at the moment not allowed to run
00:49
because she has been convicted for ambassading European funds.
00:52
So this idea that the French justice would be at the order of the government
00:58
and would chase Marine Le Pen is kind of falling apart
01:00
when you have, at the same time, Sarkozy in jail.
01:03
So that's, I think, my first main take-home.
01:05
It's good news for France.
01:07
Balance of power is there.
01:09
France is not like the US or like Brazil,
01:12
where those things are highly politicised and nobody believes in justice.
01:15
I think if you are a French citizen right now,
01:17
you should kind of trust your judicial system.
01:19
Nobody is above the law.
01:21
Nobody is above the law.
01:22
You say that.
01:23
But when Nicolas Sarkozy walked out of the courtroom earlier,
01:26
he said that what happened was a miscarriage of justice.
01:32
I'm translating here.
01:34
This is something that Marine Le Pen, as well,
01:37
who's been barred from running for five years,
01:41
she has an appeal coming up next year ahead of the presidential election.
01:44
So we do have political figures in this country
01:47
that cast doubt on the independence of the judiciary here in France.
01:53
Yes.
01:54
I mean, and this is the absolute right to do that.
01:57
It's not only casting doubt on the independence of the judiciary.
02:00
It's just saying, I am innocent.
02:01
I have a right to appeal.
02:03
I will appeal the same way that Marine Le Pen has an appeal,
02:06
and she will learn she has even better than an appeal.
02:08
They are doing an expedited appeal for her so that if the, in my opinion,
02:13
unlikely even that she's found innocent in the embezzlement case,
02:16
she will be able to run for president.
02:19
But what is important is if you are a citizen, if you are a voter,
02:22
you're not saying like a Macron judiciary hitting only on the far right.
02:26
You're saying that in the last year, you have people from the center left,
02:30
people from the right, people from the far right who have been convicted,
02:33
and they've been convicted on charges of corruption that,
02:37
in the case of Sarkozy, it's not only one trial, no?
02:40
Like, it all started because people noticed that, wow,
02:43
this guy is having a crazy campaign.
02:45
He's able to spend so much money in 2007,
02:48
and then he's not able to spend as much money five years later.
02:50
So this led to the Big Malion affair,
02:52
in which actually they spent twice as much money as they claimed to have
02:57
in order to follow up the big show.
02:59
This led to the Aziber affair,
03:01
which was convicted to try to influence a judge,
03:04
this led to this affair.
03:05
It's several different judges, several different cases,
03:08
and a general idea that the 2007 election in France was not fairly contested.
03:14
And if there is one person I would like to hear from today,
03:17
it's Sigourney Royal, who was opposed to Nicolas Sarkozy,
03:21
and he's learning today that it seems that,
03:23
according to the French justice, it was not a fair election.
03:26
He didn't want fair and square,
03:27
because somehow he organized a criminal organization
03:31
to solicit funds from Libya,
03:33
which is kind of unbelievable.
03:35
Ronald Fouca, we're going to have to leave it there, unfortunately.
03:37
Thank you for joining us on the program today.
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