France's top court accepts Le Pen challenge to crucial election law

Feb 2, 2012, 10:55 GMT

Paris - A constitutional challenge by France's far-right National Front party to an election law that could disqualify its leader, Marine le Pen, from running for president was given the go ahead Thursday by the country's highest court.

The Council of State said in a statement that the constitutional question raised by le Pen's party 'fulfilled the legal conditions in order to be sent to the Constitutional Council for examination.'

Under a law dating to 1976, a person who wants to run for president has to be sponsored by 500 elected officials.

Le Pen says she has struggled to secure enough signatures from the country's around 47,000 elected officials, despite polls showing her to be voters' third-favourite candidate. On Tuesday she said she had received 340 endorsements.

The deadline for submitting the list of signatures for the April 22 presidential election is March 16.

The National Front blames le Pen's difficulties on a stipulation in the 1976 law that says candidates must publish the names of the mayors who sponsor them.

The party argues the requirement contravenes a constitutional guarantee on political pluralism.

The nine-member Constitutional Council - the country's top authority on constitutional matters - has three months to consider whether the law respects the constitution.

This is le Pen's first presidential campaign.

Her father, FN founder Jean-Marie le Pen, who ran for president five times, also complained of difficulties in getting 500 signatures, but always managed to secure them in the end, bar in one election in 1981.

Some opposition members have accused the younger le Pen of overstating her difficulties in order to cement her image as a political outsider - an allegation she rejects.

Analysts say that her strong showing in opinion polls may be deterring mayors from the main parties from sponsoring her.

Polls show she enjoys the support of between 16 and 19 per cent of voters, compared with between 30 and 31 per cent for Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, and between 24 and 26 per cent for incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Le Pen's poll numbers have caused fears of a repeat of the 2002 election upset, in which Jean-Marie le Pen, a former paratrooper and convicted Holocaust denier, defeated the Socialist candidate for a place in the second round.

Le Pen was easily defeated in the second round by the conservative candidate Jacques Chirac.