PARIS (AP) — France already faced one of the world’s most important elections next year. Now it has one of the more unusual.Far-right leader Marine Le Pen ’s decision to run for the presidency for a fourth time means that someone found guilty not once but twice of embezzling public funds will campaign to lead the European Union ’s largest nation.On Tuesday, a Paris appeals court cleared a path for the 57-year-old Le Pen to run by shortening a ban on seeking public office that had spelled possible doom for her ambitions. Opponents now know who they’ll be up against in the election less than 10 months away.She’s using the latest twist in her legal saga to fortify her story of a combative politician who is taking on the system in the interests, she says, of France.“Her argument is essentially this: ‘Despite all the obstacles and all the ordeals I’ve been through, I’m still standing, I’m still running. I entered politics to carry this national project for France through to the end,’” said Luc Rouban, a senior researcher at Paris’ Sciences Po school of political sciences who studies Le Pen’s National Rally party.
Legal uncertainty hangs over the electionWhile the Paris appeals court reduced both the ban and the prison sentence that judges handed down last year, it still ordered that she must serve a year of home detention, with her whereabouts monitored electronically.The punishment conjured up the prospect of a candidate hoping to lead France stumping for votes with an electronic tag on her ankle.
