Doctor Nicolas and Monsieur Sarko

Nicolas Sarkozy was on Europe 1 radio this morning (video) praising Britain as a model that France should follow when it comes to dealing with unemployment. France, he also said, is suffering compared with Germany and its other neighbours because everyone else works more. That was Sarko the liberal reformer talking.

But then the new sulphurous Sarkozy took over, rambling about the genetic predetermination of paedophiles and homosexuals. "I have never had the slightest urge to rape a child..." he remarked. Really ? You could feel much of France choking on their croissants. Does Sarkozy really have to play so hard for the voters who favour Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front ? [satirical poster above] The candidate tackled that question in Libération, this morning: "In the name of what is it wrong to win over voters for the National Front ?" he asked in a hostile interview with the leftwing newspaper.

I apologise if I've been focusing a little too hard on politics lately, but it's inevitable with the elections dominating French life this spring. For masochists or those just tuning in, here's the state of play in an Op-Ed piece in today's Times.               

Darth Sarko ready for his costume change

This is a soggy French presidential race

Charles Bremner

France was supposed to turn the page this spring. Two years since voters killed the European constitution and after 12 morose years under Jacques Chirac, the French were expected to pick a new younger leader who would haul them out of their malaise and put their nation back on the map.

Now, ten days from the first round, the generational change is assured. The three main contenders, Nicolas Sarkozy on the right, Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, and François Bayrou in the centre, are all in their early to mid-fifties. But the prospect of Gallic renaissance looks less certain.

After getting off to a roaring start last year with the near-magical rise of the Socialist Madonna, the long presidential campaign has gone soggy. All the candidates have cast themselves as reformers but none has stirred excitement; few big ideas have emerged and record numbers of voters, depite thirsting for change, are reporting themselves uncertain.

More than four in ten are telling pollsters that they have not yet decided among the 12 contenders. The field is weighted to the left, with no fewer than five anti-capitalist candidates and a Green to Ms Royal’s gauche. The most comical is surely Gérard Schivardi, a Trotskyite village mayor with a southwestern twang so thick that Parisians have trouble understanding him. Less amusing is that two million people plan to vote for Olivier Besancenot, a baby-faced postman and revolutionary.

A significant number — maybe as many as 18 per cent of voters — are preparing to blow a raspberry at the establishment by voting for Jean-Marie Le Pen. The far-right bogeyman who broke through to the final in 2002 is ready to pounce again and his sinister presence is colouring the campaign, especially Mr Sarkozy’s.

By the standards of other, more predictable elections, Mr Sarkozy, the boss of President Chirac’s neo-Gaullist camp, the Union for a Popular Movement, should walk into the Elysée Palace after the May 6 final round. Sarko has led every poll since Christmas. He has run the most professional show. He has stuck to his muscular creed of work, order and discipline and he has set the agenda in a campaign that has zapped through a catalogue of issues, often of the most trivial kind.

Ségo squandered her early lead with an erratic, improvised campaign that is the despair of her party colleagues. She has remained in second place but many have turned from her maternal, old-style socialism and switched to Mr Bayrou. The farmer-teacher is promising, like her, to reconcile the protective State with the free market, but without her implausible promises of wealth for everyone.

The contest for the most absolute executive power in any democracy does not follow the patterns of mundane parliamentary races or even US presidential campaigns. The French uncertainty stems from the tactics of two-round voting and the persistent belief that the election is about choosing someone not just to govern but to embody the nation. Who do voters want to see reviewing the Bastille Day parade and lecturing them on television from the heights of the Elysée? In this final stretch, many are wondering whether they can stomach the notion of this being President Sarkozy.

With his boundless ambition, harsh rhetoric and hot temper, the diminutive former Interior Minister, puts up backs among the young and those with the social-minded sensibility. Unfairly, he is still caricatured as a facho (fascist) and blamed for provoking with his rhetoric and tough policing the riots on the immigrant housing estates of 2005. In contrast, Ségo may be seen as flaky but she is also perceived as gutsy. Mr Bayrou is a nice guy with hazy ideas. Apart from Le Pen no candidate stirs antipathy like Sarko.

This sets the scene for an unpredictable second round that will be a referendum on Mr Sarkozy, who has not been making things easy for himself. To lock down his lead in the first round, he has moved into Le Pen’s territory. Angling for the working-class conservative vote, he is playing down his liberal, reformist side. Instead, he is posing as guardian of French identity in the face of immigration and globalisation. But by flirting with xenophobia and protectionism, he has limited his ability in the second round to rassembler, to appeal beyond party lines.

If his opponent is Ms Royal, many voters will see the Socialist, for all her flaws, as the less threatening option. She has already produced her strategy. On Tuesday she told colleagues that she would stand for la France calme against Mr Sarkozy’s la France excitée — hot-headed France. This, pollsters say, could create a new dynamic in the second round, giving the lie to countless surveys that show Ms Royal losing by up to six points. If Mr Sarkozy’s final opponent is Mr Bayrou, the antiSarko forces of Left and Centre would quite possibly put the amiable Pyrenean horse-breeder into the Elysée.

Under a President Royal, France would be guaranteed a revolution, with a woman in command of one of Europe’s most virile political worlds, but the country’s long-awaited reckoning with economic reality would once again be delayed. More realism could be expected from a President Bayrou, but his priority would still be rebuilding the strong state, not deregulating it and cutting taxes.

With his smooth-running campaign machine, Mr Sarkozy is sure that he can alter the chemistry between rounds. Darth Sarko will give way to the vulnerable, human Sarkozy. We can expect a return to speeches in which the Hungarian immigrant’s son proclaims “I have changed” and calls himself “a little Frenchman of mixed blood”. He may well succeed. If he wins, though, his victory will come with a mandate for an authoritarian, protective state as much as for la rupture, the liberalising economic reforms that used to be his credo

Comments

[John Hornsby]

As it happens, I fully agree with Sarkozy's views on paedodphiles.What should he be expected to do? Pat them on the shoulder and assure them of a cumfy place in "l'ordre juste" of a Royal France?

[Janes]

Come! save us!(or me (simply)), We don't want mister Napoleon again at the head of "French monarchy"!!! thanks a lot!
pfff I would like that games aren't done... :(
PS: I'm pleased to read your point of view about France, and see that I'm not alone...

[Stephen Bull]

Soft, amorphous or what? This is a very strange campaign.
All the issues, and trivial ones at that, have centered on Sarkozy, his opinions and his character. Nationality, use of the trains without tickets, arresting illegal grandfathers collecting children from school, the genetic basis or not of paedophilia, he has determined the issues. The real questions facing France as set out by Eric Le Boucher regularly in Le Monde: how to restore competitivity and grow the economy have never been raised. The left remains economically illiterate and consequently the right has never been challenged by any kind of Blairist combination of the market economy and an enhanced welfare state. Can France be changed without revolution?

[rocket]

I hate to say it ( No I don't!) but they are all buffoons.

http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/politiques/elections2007/247121.FR.php

Royal's "partner" partner hah! saying he doesn't like rich people. She herself falling all over her statements about Quebec and camps for young people in Africa.

Sarkozy with the latest on being born deficient.

Then the whole lot of them on the left.

They all remind me of those Monty Pythons pigeons in fast speed that would go running around the park only these candidiates are looking for a new issue to kick.

Nothing is going to change in this country. Read a bit of history. The French lost the French and Indian war in the mid 1700's in spite of having the most powerful army on earth because their generals had to wait for orders from France.

What? Have they all of a sudden got religion?

[GAG]

Rocket, you’re wrong, they’re not all buffoons, they’re all stark raving mad !
GAG

[Terry]

An excellent article. This is all very fascinating to me. U.S. elections (and candidates) as Mr. Bremner noted are terribly mundane compared to this. Any U.S. candidate who said that he never had the urge to rape a child has flushed his chances down the proverbial toilet. Howard Dean kissed his campaign goodbye with a still eerie "Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaooowww".
Still it's somewhat refreshing to see candidates without their veil. Sometimes American politics can be too rehearsed and stale.

Dont apologize, Mr. Bremner, for the article. We can talk about cheese after the election.

[rocket]

If I could vote which I can't and never will, I would vote for the camembert! But a firm camembert mind you. In the first round I might go with the Brie as a protest vote.

[christopher muir]

It's odd that the words "the war on terror" - so often used by Anglo-Saxon politicians don't seem to feature in the vocabulary of the French presidential candidates. "The war on terror" is uttered by President Bush in almost every statement he makes.

[rocket]

Best French comment heard in a long time by Jean Fançois Kahn on "C dans l'air en rediffusion" last night

Speaking about how, YES! France can meet the challenges. Gesticulating away, he talked about how at the end of the last World War, 4 "minable" resistants were able to liberate France and throw out the German aggressor at the end of the war. For him, this can be interpreted as another proof that the French could meet the challenge.

Fortunately the host and the other memebers of the panel reminded him that the Allies also had something to do with this victory.

Intégralité en vidéo de l'émission du 12 avril :
Votez pour moi

http://www.france5.fr/cdanslair/index.cfm

[Maggie]

War on terror Terry, ? these candidates are not interested in the 'wider world ' anything that does not in happen inside France is of no interest, they will all do a 'Chirac ' if asked to support EU efforts in a conflict zone.
I quote the old man himself as saying, " As far as I am concerned war always ends in disaster "
With great restraint on my part, I shall not give Rush Limbaughs reply.

[Ros]

Re the first comment - it's not a question of agreeing or not on Sarkozy's VIEWS - the question is that not being either a genitician or even an ordinary GP he dares to make such a statement -

[rocket]

Christopher Muir

"It's odd that the words "the war on terror" - so often used by Anglo-Saxon politicians don't seem to feature in the vocabulary of the French presidential candidates. "The war on terror" is uttered by President Bush in almost every statement he makes."

Mais oui! Because it can't happen here.(in France)

[Terry]

Maggie:

I made no mention of the war on terror in my post. You have accused an innocent man.

Terry

[christopher muir]

Rocket,

Since my last post, I have read that the recent bombings in Algiers have in turn heightened security activities in France. It will be of interest to see if this ramping up of surveillance plays any role in political speeches during the forthcoming days.

[Ian Varey]

Oh dear, it's that time again in France. I lived in Toulouse in 2002 when Jospin was ousted in the first "tour".All my friends texted me or phoned me to tell me the "awful news". Some of them even cried. France will be crying for some time to come I fear, because it would appear that French politicians are frightened, once again, of the word "reform". They[politicians] are terrified of loosing their jobs, which they will if "that word" features heavily in their campaigns. My question is what is France going to do to reform their country, if, as has happened over the past 25 years or so, doing nothing has brought them to where they are now? God forbid they should loose their subsidies from the European union or bring under control their 3% borrowing. Then all their criticisms of the UK would pale into insignificance due to the fact that France's poverty would be worse and very visible. France's economic picture is very distorted due to the subsidies. Why are the French voters not being told this by their politicians? Because their politicians are terrified of loosing their jobs....... and the electorate does not want to know, but this is not helping France. France needs a leader who is prepared to administer the medicine. The politicians running for president this time are all protecting their parties and positions and therefore do not deserve to be President. Move on France, you're a smart country!!

[Dominique]

Ian,

"Why are the French voters not being told this by their politicians?"

Because in France, it is the politicians that are being told by the French voters.

Reverse democracy once again!

[Dominique]

The problem with Sarkozy's view about paedodphiles is that it denies them any responsibility in what they do. If it's in the genes, then, they are not responsible.

So no victim, no justice, no jail.... Just the poor paedophile with his poor genes... Childhood, education, all of this, garbage! worth nothing! it's all in our genes he believes.

At least we are lucky. He could have said it comes from God!

Unbelivable! Sarko is dangerous. If he knows about politics, economics, foreign policy as much as he does about education and genetics, then we are in trouble!

If elected, I will praize France for it's revolution spirit

[john gregory Flinn]

"This is a soggy French presidential race"

If this were a horse race the likes of Peter O'Sullivan might be forecasting that an outsider with form could win.....!

[rocket]

Ian

"Move on France, you're a smart country!!"

The country itself may be smart but those running it aren't!

[Maggie]

Terry, sorry you are right , it was Christopher I should have mentioned.:0

[rocket]

could some of our French friends tell us if anything has changed since

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2027338.stm

[Dominique]

Rocket,

The article is as wrong today as it was then.

Tokia Saifi the first ever minority minister? i thought it was Azouz Begag? He claimed it for 3 years now! It was not him either. When i was young, we had Roger Banbuk, Kofi Yamgnane, just to name those i remenber... When i was even younger, the president of the senat (equivalent to the US vice president) was black. His name was Gaston Monnerville. He quit just before pompidou died. We were closer to having a black president than any other country a that time. Who is the president of the socialist group at the european parlement? Harlem desir, a black man.

Plenty of people of foreign origin are mayors or elected. Philippe Bertrand is today a black minister. But for a reason of media opportunity, everytime one black or arab is named, he always claimes he is the first. Same on television. But of course, no serious journalist ever questions anything that is being told by anybody. They feel so guilty they do not dare letting us know about our history.

Even Sarkozy is ready to rewrite reality in order to blame the french for not allowing him to be president because of his foreign origin!

He'd rather ask himself : what other country allows a son of immigrant to be president?

I am beginning to be fedup with the socalled french xenophobia. The first jewih community in Europe, all citizens, and that means france is antisemite? The first muslim community in europe (2 or 3 times the UK), all citizens, and that means france is islamophobic? The first black community in Europe, citizens, and that means france is racist? The first Chineese and vietnameese community in europe, citizens, and that means france is xenophobic? The most popular acting figure and best paid is of marocan origin (Djamel) the most iconic french sport figure is from algeria(zizou), the most popular french man of any category is black (Noah, ahead of all other for years now in the JDD). But of course, the french are the most racist people on earth according to the BBC.

The BBC should make real enquiries and open history books.

[terry]

Dominique:

Is it true muslim children cannot wear their headscarves in school?

Can a christian wear a cross to school?

[rocket]

Dominique

Granted, Zizou is popular and Djamel also. Now what about the other 5 million persons of Arabic extraction. Not so popular I think nor much "égalité des chances".

As per representation of minorities in French Parliament and representation in general.

Excuse me but....May I laugh in your face?

The French are not the most racist people on earth, but they are one of the most blind to believe that theirs is a country of "liberté egalité fraternité"

Just as they believe they can go against the grain and create a socialist paradise on earth.

[Dominique]

Terry,

No child can wear any religious or political symbol in public school. Neither headscarf, cross or kippa.

School is a place for children to learn about facts and learn to compromise with others, not a place for them to be confirmed in everything the self nominated clerics tells them. So they are raised confronted to two possibilities : with (outside school) or without (within school) the religious sign. So they are able to see the difference and think from different perspectives. Once adult and able to choose, then they choose.

But how could they choose if they had no opportunity to remove those signs? A child is not free at start, it becomes free when raised and able to make his own choices.

Personal view added : There is nothing like mandatory cloths in religion. That's hypocisy or "tartufferie". In french, we say "l'habit ne fait pas le moine". You do not believe "more" if you wear a cross or a headscarf.

It is not the ban that discriminates, but the religious sign that make children believe they are different eventhough they are not.

For info : as a teacher myself, i can assure you that we are now much better off. At least, we can start teaching!

[Dominique]

Rocket,

"Just as they believe they can go against the grain and create a socialist paradise on earth".

I know a lot of people let people think paradise will come when they die, but please allow me to think different. Excuse me but....May I laugh in your face?

"they are one of the most blind to believe that theirs is a country of "liberté egalité fraternité". National "motto" describe an ideal, not the reality... Why don't you blame the british for believing this foolish idea that "God saves the queen". Isn't that a xenophobic motto to believe that God is on the queen's side? Same with "God bless America". Why is that?

So please, leave us with our motto that at least heralds positive values unlike some others.

Yes, i like the ideal of "liberté égalité fraternité" and i teach it to the children of my class, white, black, arabs and chinese. I can not imagine having to teach something like "God saves the Queen" nor "God bless America", nor "Deutschland uber alles". That sounds really xenophobic if you think of it once.

[Terry]

Dominique:

Ever hear any children sing this nice little song in school?

Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these bloody despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

We too shall enlist
When our elders' time has come
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory

By contrast, God Bless America:

God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.

[Dominique]

Terry,

I did not talk about the marseillaise did i? Please let me inform you that we do not make ceremonies with flags and hymne nationale at school unlike some other countries.

But we do teach liberté égalité fraternité. Should'nt we?

As for the song, we study it like we study history and explain the context of it being written 200 years ago. We do not tell children they should go and kill all those who try to get rid of the republic!

I wonder if american children are told that God may not exist after all? And that if it does, he does not "prefer" americans to others.

Once again, you can always read sentences with different point of views :

God Bless America,
what about the others?

Land that I love.
so you dislike other lands?

Stand beside her, and guide her
beside her against who? Do you need a guide? what about freedom?

Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
good point : lesson of geography!

God bless America,
Why?

My home sweet home
others go to hell! it's not yours!

Terry, i am afraid your view is often a caricature

[rocket]

Dominique,

You're a French school teacher?

Now I understand why you have so much time to blog.

Your arguments leave me "de marbre" knowing the source. The only thing that I regret is that all of us are giving you free english lessons.

[Terry]

Dominique:

Well, you did say:

I can not imagine having to teach something like "God saves the Queen" nor "God bless America", nor "Deutschland uber alles". That sounds really xenophobic if you think of it once.

So, I was thinking. I wonder if the French have a song that's really xenophobic? Hmmmm?

I wouldnt have children sing your national anthym either if I were a French schoolteacher. It's like the song version of Nightmare on Elm Street. Sharing coffins, slitting throats, ripping out wombs. How lovely.

A very good foreshadow of what the revolution was to bring.