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Can justice be truly blind? Truly impartial and impervious to biases, pressures and power plays? Can citizens in this day and age agree to accept it when a court bars a presidential front runner from contesting the next election? The party of the French far-right’s Marine Le Pen calls it "an execution of democracy," the ruling that finds nearly two dozen guilty of running a 'system' that funneled 2-point-9 million euros from the European Parliament to National Rally insiders.

Injustice is in the eye of the beholder: take Romania and Turkey where front runners have also been recently barred under very, very different circumstances. Whenever a politician's convicted, it's a stress test for institutions and rule of law. In the case of Marine Le Pen, she's got the backing of a growing media echo chamber. How far will crying foul carry the far-right in France? Donald Trump never went to trial for allegedly trying to forcibly overturn his 2020 loss. With the U-S president now testing constitutional limits in the US, will the illiberal winds across the Atlantic further stoke sympathy for Le Pen or spook citizens who at the end of the day may look at the turmoil in Washington and prefer France’s imperfect republic as it is?

Produced by Rebecca Gnignati, Elisa Amiri, Ilayda Habip.

Out of the running? Marine Le Pen conviction upends French politics

The Debate

Out of the running? Marine Le Pen conviction upends French politics