French Presidentials 2007, April May Options

[Rain]

Ségolène Royal - Parti Socialiste (link)



Nicolas Sarkozy - UMP (link)



François Bayrou - UDF (link)

Jean-Marie Le Pen - National Front (link)

info from wiki on French electoral issues-calendar-other candidates (link)

[Sara]

that wiki article is interesting. thanks for sharing rain. i was thinking, i don't know much about governance in france, but from my understanding there's a strong tendency to the right rather than the left, and this tendency is supported by many voters, is that right? it is interesting that the "mainstream left" supports a market economy! it just sounds like a misnomer to me. it's quite deceiving. almost like when people speak of a centre-left governments in Latin America which have nothing to do with the left and everything to do with IMF, World Bank and other anti-human financial and monetary institutions.

have you been following the news, polls or opinions on the french presidentials? where do you feel it's headed?

[Rain]

Well, I would say that those who would wish to vote have lost faith in the French Socialist Party, and that the left vote is sort of scattered, making it easier for the right and far right to win votes, though the tough language in the right on law and order, for example, is generally well received. I know this is more about the 07 elections, but I think this explains a bit the 02 elections, where at the second round, you had Chirac (right), and extreme right-wing Le Pen ; maybe not surprising where Jospin’s (‘socialist’) government was seen as a ‘bourgeois’ govt, with one of Jospin’s slogans being ‘yes to the market economy’, and very focused on state enterprise privatisations, among other things. So, I think you have this climate where people are favourable to hard stances from the right-wing, on the one hand, and others who are disillusioned with the left.

I can’t really answer your question about who will win ; it’s not because I’ve not been following it closely (well, I haven’t !), it’s just that the polls now in favour of Sarkozy, were a while back in favour of Royal. (Right now, maybe she's down in the polls because she's making blunders in her statements quite a bit.) You have Sarkozy, with his tough talks on crime and illegal immigration, and who has been callled a neo conservative American with a French passport by the left, and then, you have Ségolène Royal, who, for ex, has said Blair has done good things, angering the left. I think Sarkozy could pull it off, because to me it seems he could convince the right, whereas I’m not sure yet if Ségolène Royal could rally the left.

[Sara]

ohhh i see i see. actually rain, this might interest you.. i remember reading somewhere i think it may have been Wars of the 21st Century: New Threats, New Fears by Igancio Ramonet and there was a section looking at the Western European shift to the right in the last few years and the rise of anti-immigration stance as well as the strong racialization and othering of immigrant populations in places like Germany and France. slightly off topic but i think it might be of interest

from my understanding, the general pattern has been that the right seems always to be more united than the left... but i just wanted to comment on "Blair did some good things" and "we support the market economy." in NZ, the ruling party is the labour party, which supposedly is a social democrat party. the prime minister believes that what NZ is doing now is not neoliberalism (privitasation, selling off assets to foreign companies, reducing regulations on trade, liberalising finance etc etc) yet this is precisely where NZ has been heading in the past 8 or so years. in fact, sometimes you look at NZ today and you think wow the social democratic committement to the market economy is even stronger than a right wing government committement. and so it seems to me that it is an issue of credibility. when you are a leftist government you still have to answer to corporations and foreign investments, so you put yourself out there and you befriend businesses and you sell the country off bit by bit. obviously this is not just new zealand... we saw the same thing with Lula in Brazil. in fact i think conservative goverments can get away with being more perhaps more careless about neoliberal rules (like balancing the books) because they are "conservative." ah ramble haha sorry! but yeah it'd be interesting to see the outcome this year and to see if in fact there's a significant change in policies. i mean as long as one exists in a system inherently unable to generate equality and fairness.. i'm not sure if different parties are going to produce significantly different results.

[Rain]

I didn't know that about NZ, though I could have guessed that a 'Labour' govt would do just that, we also have a 'Labour' party ruling the country here, and yes, there is nothing remotely 'lefty' about them, maybe they should put a new definition for Labour in the dictionary..

If you like Ignacio Ramonet, you can go to Le Monde Diplomatique' online (mondediplo.com), they have an English edition, I don't know if that is where you got 'War of the 21st Century...', or if it was a book you talked about, but he's regularly published there (editor there).

[tomalegrand]

T'es français Rain?

ça faisait longtemps que je n'avais pas poster ici

[Rain]

non, je suis mauricienne. en effet, ça fait longtemps, mais je me souviens de ton nom quand même.


so...who will it be...Ségo or Sarko?

[Sara]

oh thanks for that rain, i'll check out the link sometime! but yeah no the wars of the 21st century is a book. definately check it out if you get a chance!

[Rain]

Chirac bows out amid new French revolution


As President Chirac prepares to step down after more than 20 years, the mood among voters and contenders reflects a desire for a radical break with the failures of the old elitist ways

Alex Duval in Paris
Sunday March 11, 2007
The Observer


The curtain call will be brief. But Jacques Chirac's 10-minute televised speech tonight - officially slated as the 74-year-old President's announcement that he will not run for a third term - marks a historic generational, class and gender shift in French politics.

The past week's opinion polls show the three front-runners for the forthcoming presidential election - all modernisers under 60 and including France's first woman candidate, Socialist Segolene Royal - neck and neck. With six weeks to go to the 22 April first round, Le Monde said yesterday that the election was the most unpredictable since 1969.


It already looks likely that France's political rejuvenation will see the forced retirement, at 78, of veteran Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. He is spending this weekend in a frantic battle to stay in the hunt as he has until Friday to secure the Constitutional Council's requirement from all candidates of 500 endorsements from mayors and other elected officials. He last failed to obtain them in 1981 and admits he is 70 signatures short. 'We're hard at it. We need to sign up 10 a day,' said an aide.

Even if the FN leader qualifies for the race, he already looks outpaced as third man by the centre-right former Education Minister, Francois Bayrou, 56, whose down-to-earth policies appear to appeal both to Royal's potential voters and to right-wingers who are put off by the brashness of the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, 51.

The change is, as ever in French politics, subtle. But observers point to key recent events - including the No-vote to the European constitution in May 2005, the riots in French suburbs that autumn and the student protests in the spring of 2006 against the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, and his 'first employment contract' - as signals from the electorate of a desperate cry for new dynamism.

'The crisis France is in is centred on the complacency of its politicians,' said political scientist Emmanuel Giannesini. 'They are complacent in the face of issues that are visible every day - corruption, short cuts and shoddiness - and which have stripped the country of the notion of what the republic stands for.'

Long before its youth became restive, the French had demonstrated that they wanted a break from the ways of an ageing, elitist and distant political class, top-heavy with graduates, like Chirac, of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration.

In the first round of the 2002 presidential elections, voters showed their desperation rather clumsily by voting for the only alternative to hand - Le Pen - rather than for Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin. That year it was only Le Pen's presence in the second round that secured Chirac's landslide to a second term. Even then, Chirac understood he was out of step with the people. Within weeks of his re-election, he sent politicians on to the ground to make contact with grassroots France. But the move never translated into a palpable sense that la classe politique was in touch with la France d'en bas

Yesterday's Ipsos opinion poll gave Sarkozy a second-round victory against Royal of 53.5 per cent. His first-round score was put at 32.5 per cent and Royal's at 26. Bayrou was placed third on 20.5 per cent and Le Pen trailed on 12.5. However, polls earlier last week showed Bayrou's score reaching 24 per cent - making the centrist gentleman farmer a real threat to both main candidates.

'If there are as many of us here,' he told a rally of 3,000 in Perpignan on Friday, 'it's that something fundamental is happening in this country.' He ascribed his growing popularity to his closeness to French people and thrifty policies to tackle France's debt. 'The main parties are rushing around, pulling out the big guns against me. They are targeting me, but what they do not understand is that it's the French people who will decide.'

However, Bayrou may yet fall foul to criticism - such as that from Sarkozy - that he is too wishy-washy. 'He told me he ran the Education Ministry in consultation with the trade unions,' said Sarkozy. 'That's why no one remembers him doing anything when he was there.'

Bayrou has also come under fire for evasion about the Prime Minister he would appoint, promising only to 'pool the best talent from the right and left'.

But if he maintains his presence in the polls - and wins round a sizeable share of the 16 per cent of voters who told Ipsos yesterday that they remain undecided - he represents a far greater threat to Royal, 53, than he does to Sarkozy.

Royal's campaign hit a high point 10 days ago when she used the plight of the soon-to-be-jobless 10,000 European Airbus employees to illustrate the failure of recent industrial policies. Her outburst prompted a response from Sarkozy - once Chirac's Finance Minister - in which he had to admit that an injection of government cash would not prevent redundancies and that there was a need for the state to maintain a share in large enterprises.

But in other respects Royal's campaign is weakened by its dependence on the Socialist Party machine. After some internal spats this year, she sidelined several younger members of her team, falling back on old-timers - such as former Mitterrandist minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius - who may be just the chip-off-the-block personalities voters want to get away from.

Yesterday's Le Monde suggested that, unless Royal revamps her campaign and makes it look more dynamic, France could face the same scenario as in 1969, which saw two right-wing candidates in the run-off, Alain Poher and the ultimately victorious Georges Pompidou. In that election, the divided left garnished only 31 per cent of the first-round vote.

Bayrou's opinion poll rise - combined with tempered rhetoric from Le Pen - has put wind in Sarkozy's sails. After weeks of maintaining a nice-guy image and refraining from evictions of squatters or comments about clamping down on crime, the Union pour la Majorite Parlementaire candidate on Thursday talked tough. Sarkozy's call on France 2 television for the creation of a 'ministry for immigration and national identity' was immediately denounced by the Socialists as 'a flirt with the Front National' electorate. Bayrou said: 'When you lump immigration and identity together, you're crossing a dangerous line.'

But political scientist Loic Blondiaux warns against hasty predictions of a right-right run-off on 6 May: 'We only have opinion polls to go by, and it's crucial to remember that voters who today say they will support Bayrou are much less certain of their choice than the majority of those opting for Royal or Sarkozy.'

According to Brice Teinturier of the TNS-Sofres polling institute, voters are in 'the temptation phase' and this will gave way to 'the decision stage': 'The Bayrou phenomenon is interesting because he seems to appeal to the educated voters who are not traditionally waverers. The race is wide open.'

Even though for three years Chirac has been reported as detesting Sarkozy - whose boisterous style jars with his own regal stance - the President is likely to endorse the Interior Minister.

But according to observers close to him, the President will not use tonight's speech 'which he has spent several weeks perfecting' to direct his supporters to vote for Sarkozy. Even the Interior Minister himself has admitted that support from Chirac at this stage would be 'helpful but against all probability'.

Instead, as Chirac enters the last weeks of a presidency he inaugurated in 1995 with a return to nuclear testing, moving on to the introduction of the euro and his outspoken opposition to the invasion of Iraq, he now looks above all mindful of leaving at the end a good impression.

The run-up to tonight has been marked by several 'on the couch' TV interviews with him and his wife, Bernadette, and much stress on Chirac's desire to be remembered for his commitment to France. 'You can approve or disapprove of my actions. I have always attempted to act in the best interests of the French people,' he told television interviewer Michel Drucker last month.

On Friday in Brussels, he appeared to wish to make peace with his European partners, eating humble pie on the 2005 referendum result. 'We failed on the referendum. We let the French believe there was a Plan B we could reach for.'

Frederic Salat-Baroux, secretary-general of the Elysee Palace, said that tonight's speech 'is a key moment for the President. The speech will be 100 per cent personal and focused on the future. He will express his view of the issues and challenges ahead - his passion for France.'

Chirac's life and times

Born: 29 November 1932 in Paris.

President: from 17 May 1995.

Prime Minister: from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988. Mayor of Paris from 1976 to 1995.

Little known qualification: Prince of Andorra since 1995.

CV highlights best kept quiet: was briefly a Communist. Is a freemason of the 'Alpina' lodge.

Volunteer: for the war in Algeria where he served 18 months (1957-58).

Married: in 1956 to Bernadette Chodron de Courcel. Two daughters, Laurence and Claude.

Favourite dish: tete de veau (calves head).

Favourite drink: lager.

Controversies: Chirac admitted the 'collective fault' of France in collaborating with Nazi Germany in 1995. He opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2002.

Drama: survived a right-wing assassination bid on Bastille Day, 2002.

Biggest mistake: decided to stage a referendum on the European constitution in May 2005, when 54.8 per cent of French people voted Non.

Popularity: in a 2005 survey just 1 per cent of French people wanted him to run in for President in 2007.

[Rain]

http://www.zdlr.net/board/index.php?showtopic=13979


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edit:

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This post has been edited by Rain: May 6 2007, 10:22 PM