Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"To conclude, political rights should never be left to judges. Anywhere. Ever. The moment you let the judiciary decide who can seek our votes, our oligarchies are bound to distort what little prospects of a democracy we have. No sensible progressive can “trust the courts” in an exploitative system for which the so-called separation of powers is at best a heroic assumption and at worst a ruse. It is as naïve as it is to believe in an independent central bank!</p><p>Anyone who cares about the democratic idea should be deeply worried with the ease with which the panicking Radical Centre bans an ultra-right opponent they think may beat them at the polls. Progressives, understandably, fear that the same courts and the same means will be used tomorrow to ban us. I agree. They will! In 2015 they shut down our banks to overthrow people like me, here in Greece. If that hadn’t worked, they would have tried to ban us from running for office – indeed, rightist lawyers tabled charges against me at Greece’s Parliament, just when I resigned the finance ministry. The charges? High Treason – the allegation being that I “undermined the national currency” which, comically, they identified as the… euro.</p><p>So, yes, we, the Left, have every reason to fear that what they are doing to Le Pen today they will most definitely do to us if we rise sufficiently in the polls. However, that should NOT be the principal reason why we oppose Le Pen’s ban, or of that clownish Georgescu’s ban in Romania. We should oppose these bans for deeper reasons: Because no one’s political rights should be rescindable. For any reason. Anywhere. Ever!</p><p>Having the guts to say that, especially in defence of the political rights of an abominable politician we should want to crush at the polls, is the litmus test for a radical democrat, for a Left worth its salt."</p><p><a href="https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/04/09/should-le-pen-be-barred-what-is-the-lefts-right-answer-on-this-conundrum/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">yanisvaroufakis.eu/2025/04/09/</span><span class="invisible">should-le-pen-be-barred-what-is-the-lefts-right-answer-on-this-conundrum/</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/EU" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>EU</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/France" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>France</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/LePen" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>LePen</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Democracy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Democracy</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Justice" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Justice</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Corruption" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Corruption</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Politics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Politics</span></a></p>