No, Marine Le Pen does not wish to reinstate the death penalty, abolished in France in 1981. instead a “real perpetuity”. But the former lawyer was less clear about the use that could be made of the citizens’ initiative referendum that she will legalize if elected on April 24. Until this Friday.
In 2012, Marine Le Pen, if elected, proposed to go through the referendum route to allow the French to choose between the death penalty, a historical marker of the far-right party co-founded by her father, and “real” life. In 2015, the day after the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Kosher, she said she was in favor of it “in a personal capacity”. In 2017, she announced not to include it in her program, leaving the French the possibility of deciding via a popular initiative referendum.
“We are for giving power back to the people”
Questioned on BFMTV this Friday, the deputy of Pas-de-Calais swept away with a “we cannot, it is unconstitutional”, the idea of submitting to the vote of the French the remission of capital punishment in the arsenal French penal. “The citizens’ initiative referendum that I want to implement and which allows 500,000 citizens to submit to the French a bill or the repeal of a law, has two limits: it cannot revise the Constitution – for definition they are other ways of revision – (…) and when a referendum would call into question a vital element for the country. For example, a citizens’ initiative referendum could not propose the abolition of the army,” she explained.
Problem: the day before, Marine Le Pen was less categorical: “the citizens’ initiative referendum is a total guarantee to return power to the people, to blow a new wind of freedom and democracy”, she defended Thursday morning on France 2 Adding: “The death penalty could go through a referendum, everything could go through a referendum, except what goes against the Constitution,” she said.
24 hours earlier, the interim president of the National Rally maintained the same ambiguity. “We are opposed to the death penalty and in favor of real life for the most serious sentences”, explained Jordan Bardella on RTL, immediately adding a “but we are for giving power back to the people”.