France: the heat is on
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Immigration, insecurity and joblessness are the three big themes that are likely to dominate the French election campaign. VAIJU NARAVANE
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Strikes and other social rumblings paralyse various parts of the country ...
Photos: Reuters, AP, AFP
Wide choice for the voters: Jacques Chirac.
WITH 38 declared candidates already in the ring and probably more to follow, France's 40 million voters have an embarrassingly wide choice for the first round of the presidential elections now just 18 weeks away.
And although the right-wing presidential hopeful, interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialist candidate Segolene Royal are out and out favourites for the second round, a first-round upset, a repeat (in reverse) of 2002, when the extreme right wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen edged out the Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from the race cannot be ruled out. This time, however, the fall guy could well be the aggressive and hyperactive Interior Minister, betrayed by members of his own political family, done in from within.
Segolene Royal
For now both Sarkozy and Royal, the first woman to come within graspable distance of the presidential trophy, are multiplying their efforts to seduce voters. He with his tough talk on security and immigration, a diminutive Rambo scrambling for extreme-right, anti-immigrant voters, she of the Madonna good looks and glowing smile, her ear stuck prominently to the ground, listening hard to the ordinary woes of ordinary people in perfect practice of "participatory democracy". She beat back two powerful party "elephants" to win the Socialist nomination and continues, despite a couple of foreign policy gaffes, to stand a real chance of winning.
Immigration, insecurity and joblessness are the three big themes that are likely to dominate the campaign and both Royal and Sarkozy have been pushed, by the raging populist rhetoric of extreme right leaders, to take a hardline on immigration and juvenile delinquency. The heat is on and Sarkozy has just put through parliament his fourth law on insecurity and crime in the last two years, each one tougher and more repressive than the one before.
There is almost universal agreement in Europe that the best place to live on the continent is France. The country is rich and beautiful, the people elegant, chic and cultivated, the food and drink divine ... Only the French don't appear to share that view anymore.
Gerard Marmet, a sociologist who publishes a report on the nation's mental health every two years has just concluded that the French are paranoid, hypochondriac and worse ... schizophrenic.
Jean-Marie Le Pen
A collective malaise, he says, appears to have gripped France, a country that offers high quality free education, extensive and efficient transport, health and other public services and some of the most generous pension and unemployment schemes.
The good and the bad
Nevertheless, almost everything is seen in shades of black or grey: the economy is in tatters (although businesses are booming and French investments abroad are increasing rapidly), the job situation is dreadful (although unemployment is now down to eight per cent from 11 per cent three years ago) and the quality of life has woefully declined. Strikes and other social rumblings paralyse various parts of the country — and occasionally all of it, with clockwork regularity. And yet individually the French appear to be having a jolly good time: a large part of the workforce has opted for the 35-hour work-week, the beaches are packed and the hotels full, luxury goods are registering brisk sales.
The French, Mermet says, are paranoid because they are convinced the whole world is out to get them, believing in a globalised conspiracy theory and a consequent betrayal by the political ruling classes. They are hypochondriac because they are convinced their economy is terminally ill, plagued by capital flight, out-sourcing and delocalisation of industry. They resolutely refuse to look at their own successes, believing they are flat out, in the doldrums. And they are schizophrenic because they insist on clinging to their make-believe identity, refusing to see a swiftly changing world.
It is this grumpy, disillusioned, disgruntled lot that presidential hopefuls will have to win over in order to emerge victorious. The disenchantment with the ruling elite has already bred resentment towards the Parisian cliques, pitting the capital against the provinces. The extremes, whether it be the extreme-right anti-immigrant, xenophobic National Front (FN), the ultra-Catholic, anti-Islam Movement for France (MPR) or the radical, anti globalisation leftist parties such as the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), the Communist Party (PCF) or the Workers Struggle (LO) party, have already made substantial inroads into the mainstream vote.
Expected patterns
The extreme right parties are jointly expected to poll at least 20 per cent of the vote. While the extreme left, including the Green Party is expected to win 10 per cent of the first round vote. That leaves 70 per cent of the vote over which the socialist, centrist and conservative candidates will have to fight. Francois Bayrou, a dull but sincere centrist candidate who leads the Union for French Democracy (UDF) Party, is credited with eight per cent of the vote. If no other conservative candidate enters the fray, Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy will be just about evenly matched with 30-odd per cent each.
But what if more right wing candidates enter the arena and split the conservative vote? The possibility of Jean-Marie Le Pen trouncing Nicolas Sarkozy to enter a second round run-off against Segolene Royal is probably giving the ambitious interior minister a combination of dyspepsia and nightmares.
Nicolas Sarkozy.
Such a scenario cannot be ruled out and the mastermind behind Nicolas Sarkozy's eventual downfall is more than likely to be ace player, Jacques Chirac himself. The enmity between the two men is now over a decade old, going back to 1995, when the ambitious Sarkozy, seeing Jacques Chirac's ratings slide in the polls, suddenly turned coat to support Prime Minister Edouard Balladur who appeared to be a very safe bet indeed. Except that Chirac beat Balladur to become President of France and never forgave Sarkozy his brazen betrayal.
Despite his affable exterior, insiders say Jacques Chirac neither forgives nor forgets. It is rumoured that their falling out was as personal as it was professional, linked to Sarkozy's alleged seduction and subsequent dumping of Chirac's favourite daughter, Claude. In the last four years Sarkozy, the son, has been engaged in a desperate struggle to kill his political father, first wresting the leadership of a party conceived as Chirac's personal electoral machine, then speaking out openly to call for a radical change of direction. He now speaks openly of wanting a "rupture" with the past, thus denouncing Chirac's 11-year leadership.
Will Chirac run?
What are the options open to Chirac? He has voted against members of his own political family when his personal survival was in question. He had no compunction asking his supporters to vote against Conservative candidate Valery Giscard d'Estaing in the 1981 presidential election. Francois Mitterrand won, putting an end to 38 years of uninterrupted conservative rule.
Will Chirac go so far as to ensure the defeat of his own side in order to spite a man he despises and detests? Franz Olivier Giesbert, author of a hugely successful biography of Chirac, describes him as being completely devoid of morals. One thing and one thing only counts in Chirac's life and that is Chirac himself. He could encourage his loyal defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie to sacrifice herself and stand against Sarkozy. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin could be called in to open yet another front. And then there is the possibility that Chirac himself will seek a third term.
Journalistic gossip has it that the presidential knives are being sharpened at the Elysee Palace and that the president is now preparing for the plunge. He has kept the suspense going, saying he will announce his decision whether or not to run.
His wife Bernadette threw out the first hint when she declared in an interview on his 74th birthday recently: "Have you seen what good shape he's in? Yes, he'll go (to the Constitutional Council as is the practice for former heads of state) but in five years... Do you hear me, in five years!"
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