Présidential 2007

I wrote this piece earlier today, before the result was known, but I decided to publish anyway.

Since school I’ve always had a strong interest in politics so I’ve followed the 2007 Presidential elections as closely as my still-limited French will allow. Through the local paper and talking to friends, I think I have a reasonably good grip of how the process works, but I have had to rely on the UK media to understand the nuance of the political debate. My French just isn’t good enough (yet) and people here are much more discreet about their political opinions – no ‘Sarko’ or ‘Ségo’ posters stuck like ‘for sale’ signs in people’s gardens here.

In the run-up to the first round, the Journal of the Haute-Marne ran a feature on an Observer Journalist, Jason Burke, who wanted to understand the views of the citizens of a typical medium-sized French provincial town. To the delight of our local paper, he chose Chaumont and his piece in today’s edition gives the Préfecture (the capital town of Haute-Marne) a rare mention in the UK national media.

To the uninitiated Anglo-Saxon, the two-stage process may seem a Gallic mystery. In the first round, people voted for one of 12 candidates representing a wide range of interests and positions - from the Hunting, Fishing, Nature, Tradition party to the Workers’ Struggle party and everything else in between. The Wikipedia’s entry on French political parties highlights how fragmented the landscape is; it lists 18 nationwide parties and many more minor ones, including five supporting the royalist cause (and I don’t mean those supporting Mme Royal). Only the parties who can gain the support of 500 ‘sponsors’ from elected officials in at least 30 different departments make the long ‘shortlist’ candidates for the first round.

The process is very open; the local paper publishes the results in detail for each commune and these are also posted on the noticeboard at the Mairie. This is how I know that at least a couple of our fellow inhabitants have Trotskyist sympathies and more than a dozen voted for the Front National (something I’ll worry about for the next five years, no doubt). It feels, too, as if voting is accepted as everyone’s social responsibility – 85% of the national electorate voted in the first round last month.

But elections are not about processes – it’s the result that’s important. From what I’ve read and heard both here and from the English media, both candidates believe that France needs reform and the fundamental debate is about how. Should she become more closely modelled on the liberal economies of the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries or not?

As I see it, France has always been proud of its distinctly individual values - a sophisticated nation with, historically, a strong sense of social responsibility. Playing in the same playground as other western countries doesn’t have to mean playing by exactly the same rules. I fear France may become yet another place where what’s seen as ‘consumer choice’ and ‘economic freedom’ will lead to the sharp divides between the haves and the have-nots which we see elsewhere; she will become just another country where people use the comfort-blanket of shopping to pass the time when they’re not working.

Jason Burke sums it up far more eloquently than me in today’s ‘Observer’; the people of France are either voting to ‘Work longer to earn more’ or for ‘Human values not financial values’.

Jonathan is more optimistic – as his French teacher says prospective Presidents always say they’re going to change the things they so obviously can’t because these things are wired into the French nation’s psyche. There’s still hope for a nation for whom ‘soldiarité’ and ‘cohésion’ are part of the everyday vocabulary, and there’s so much more meaning attached to these simple words in French than can be conveyed in any translation into English.

Links

Jason Burke's article in today's 'Observer'

The Wikipedia on French political parties

The Wikipedia on the 2007 presidential elections