When the verdict of a criminal court of Paris flashed on the screens of Hénin-Beaumont, many customers in the Café de la Paix received it with the indignation and disappointment marine Le Pen provided.
The far-right political leader has been declared of undue manufacture of guilt, sentenced to four years in prison-two years suspended, two in a form of domestic arrest has fined over $ 100,000.
But the most pungent was the decision that prevented her from applying for a public office for five years, making her not admissible to run to the presidential elections of France in 2027.
For people here, Mrs. Le Pen is not only the leader of the national event and the three -time presidential candidate. It is their local legislator in the low chamber of Parliament.
“I am disgusted,” said Jean-Marc Sergheraert, 70 years old, a retired charity manager, who climbs a big television screen. There, Mrs. Le Pen was denouncing the decision as politically motivated and unjust because, she said, her condemnation would have been applied even if she appealed, which is often not the case in France.
“He’s right,” added Sergheraert. “He has to defend himself and go immediately to the end. If they want that we take the Capitol as they did to Washington, I will go to Elysée,” he said, referring to the Presidential Palace of Paris.
Nearby, Arlette Fascerlique, 86 years old, agreed on his light beer flute. “Providing the Frenchman to do something pushes us more to do it,” he said. “He will have millions of more votes.”
Mrs. Le Pen said she would appeal to the sentence, although it would be difficult to solve her challenge in time for 2027. She was sentenced to deviate the European Parliament funds to her party.
“This decision should disgust everyone. It is totally arbitrary,” said Steeve Briois, national mayor of Hénin-Beaumont, distributing flyers encouraging the premises to rise peacefully against “those who would have elusive democracy”.
If a place in France shakes Fury on the sentence, it would be Hénin-Beaumont, a city of 26,000 years in the former French northern industrial heart, devastated first by the coal mines that closed in the 1980s and then by many factories that close, victims of globalization.
The unemployment rate in the area was more than double the national average in 2021, the last census.
Considering this “forgotten territory”, the feast of Mrs. Pen has made this of her strongholds. Although he never lived in the region, Mrs. Le Pen chose him as his political heart, running first in 1998 and continuing to represent the area in regional and European policy. In 2017, he made a campaign for a place in the National Assembly.
During the last presidential elections of 2022, he collected 67 percent of the local vote. In the legislative elections of last summer, many locally expected his party to win in a landslide and manage the government. Instead, a left-hand coalition and the power party of President Emmanuel Macron constituted a “dam” asking the deficiency candidates throughout the country to form a single anti-national vote.
However, in Hénin-Beaumont, lady Le Pen won the re-election in the first round with a great margin.
“They want to eliminate her from the presidency,” said Karen Huret, 57 years old, arriving on Tuesday morning at the market to collect supplies for her elderly mother. “The last time, they used the dam. This is another tactic.”
For many places, the loyalty to the party of Mrs. Le Pen is less ideological than an appreciation of the retail policy of her party. They cite the new aquatic center in the city and the Christmas market. They feel respected by her and the party.
“It’s kind. I took her photos with my children at the flea market,” said Mrs. Huret, a home mother. “I don’t think he’s racist. I come from the indoor-key city that everyone should be respected.”
The city had a history of corruption preceding the condemnation of Mrs. Le Pen. The former socialist mayor, Gérard Dalongeville, was sentenced for having stolen 4 million euros with false invoices and sentenced to four years in prison. For some places, the last sentence of the court deepened their cynicism.
“We had communists, socialists, the national event – are all the same,” said Mohamed Oussetra, 60 years old, enjoying a Menthe Diabolo in a bar, after his maintenance of work in the hospital.
Marine Tondelier, an elected councilor of Hénin-Beaumont and leader of the National Green Party has taken the news channels to emphasize that the national event requires rigorous police and more severe-trannic phrases that, apparently, when it was its members.
“It shows you their hypocrisy,” he said. “I heard of” systems implemented against them “. The only system implemented is what they set to divert public funds.”
It was not the only one in the city he thought in that way, although perhaps in a quieter tone.
“She denigrates foreigners all the time. He says they don’t respect the law,” said Karim Zoui, 29 years old. “Well, here you are. Don’t respect the law.”
Then he used a term often applied by the extreme right to migrants – criminalor criminal.
“If they are delinquents,” he said, “they should pay.”