Newspaper's reaction the next day.
Stupefication!
Socialists Blow First Round Election
By Richard Erickson
Paris Kiosque - June 2002 - Volume 9, Number 6
Copyright (c) 2002 Richard Erickson - used with permission
From the Editor: The first round of the French election for President took
place on Sunday 21 April. Here Ric Erickson reports the results and
reaction to them on the following day, Monday 22 April.
Paris:- Monday, 22. April 2002:- Until yesterday morning the media
were telling voters the name of the probable winner in
the first round of France's presidential election. With this as
a comfortable certainty, Le Parisien treated its Saturday edition readers
to a round-up of the campaign - with tidbits and
highlights of the campaign, under the headline of: A 'Drôle'
of an Election
Everybody was in a dither during the
last week of the campaign for the election for Président
of France. Surveys indicated voters intended to stay away from
polling stations in droves.
With Easter holidays beginning or ending
- they take place at 'Easter holiday time' rather than
during Easter - other hundreds of thousands of voters planned
to be in traffic jams instead of polling booths.
Meanwhile,
all the polls showed the leading candidates - Jacques Chirac
and Lionel Jospin - losing points, dropping below the 20
percent levels - while Jean-Marie Le Pen, an extreme right-winger,
was climbing upwards.
Sunday was good for strolling on the Pont des Arts.
Being in New York, I missed
the part where Le Pen was supposed to produce his
500 endorsements. This he did on Easter weekend - as
if by magic - beating the filing deadline by a
hair. Who were saying they are gong to vote for
him anyway? Where have they been hiding?
At the opposite
end of the scale, Arlette Laguiller, the five-time Trotskyist candidate,
was scoring seven points - ahead of the Communist Party's
leader, Robert Hue. Greens and other Trotskyists were nipping on
his heels. All the Trotskyists and Greens added together could
beat Le Pen though.
Adding the Communists, the Greens and
the Socialists to the Trotskyists - then Jacques Chirac and
everybody in the 'liberal' centre or on the right, wouldn't
have a chance.
The total in the polls was over
100 percent - but, wait for it! - thirty percent
said they had no intention of voting, 46 percent hadn't
made a choice yet and 47 percent said they were
unhappy with the campaign. People will tell the polls anything.
But the TV-news showed many candidates, which the polls only
credited with only a couple of percentage points, holding big
campaign meetings before enthusiastic crowds.
One way or another, it
seemed as if Sunday would produce the expected candidates as
leading vote-getters. Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin would fight it
out head to head in the finals, on Sunday. 5.
May.
'Le Choc' - 'Stupefication' - 'Non!'
Polling stations in
smaller towns and villages closed at 18:00 and closed in
France's bigger cities at 20:00. Four out of the six
national TV channels began their first round of the presidential
election coverage between 19:00 and 19:45. I tuned in to
France-2 TV-news at 20:00.
The first estimates placed Jacques Chirac
in the lead, followed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, with Lionel Jospin in
third place and effectively eliminated from the 2nd and final
round of the presidential election, in two weeks.
Later results
did not change the situation. Le Pen, credited with 17.08%
of the vote by the Ministry of the Interior, led
Lionel Jospin by a comfortable margin of 1.04 percentage points.
And, after voting - a dozen strength-giving oysters?
Le Pen
was the first to get his victory speech broadcast from
National Front party headquarters in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud.
He was surrounded by supporters gone ga-ga with joy and
besieged by media lenses, who possibly outnumbered the party faithful.
Le Parisien's comment - "It's more than a simple earthquake."
At age 73, it is Le Pen's fourth attempt to
capture the presidency of France - and most likely his
last.
The abstention rate yesterday was calculated as 28.4% of
registered voters. Of the remainder who cast ballots, 82.2% voted
against Jean-Marie Le Pen. France has been turned upsidedown.
Maybe
it's a European thing. In German state elections yesterday, Chancellor
Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat, got bombed too.
In France,
with right-wing candidate Chirac facing extreme right-wing candidate Le Pen,
the polls are giving Chirac an advantage of 77 percent
to Le Pen's 23 percent. On Sunday, 5. May, abstentions
are expected to be 26 percent.
The False Mono-Issue
The
Président, Jacques Chirac, based his reelection campaign on the issue
of 'security,' or to be more precise, the civil 'insecurity'
that the French think is a menacing reality of their
daily lives.
This somewhat minor theme outweighed the positive achievements
of Lionel Jospin, who as prime minister for the past
five years, has been managing the country.
With 'insecurity' as
the sole issue, Jean-Marie Le Pen, considered to be 'authoritarian,'
did not need to campaign and he didn't. If you
were listening, there was nothing to hear. Unlike in his
past campaigns, he was careful to say nothing.
Amazingly, many
Le Pen voters 'heard' - 'between the lines!' - in
small towns with no delinquents and no immigrants, they voted
'for' anti-immigration and 'security.'
More on the Seine - more
eating and drinking, or cruising.
With yesterday's outcome, the French
have only a narrow choice - one that has nothing
to do with resolving the question of what sort of
future France wants to have, or whether it wants to
have one.
Many of Le Pen's voters have and will
continue to vote for the past.
Rally Around Chirac?
A
good part of the Socialist's defeat yesterday is being attributed
to the various other leftist parties of 'outsiders' who managed
to gather over 20 percent of the votes cast.
Included
with these are the good fifth-place score for Arlette Laguiller
and her Trotskyist 'Lutte Ouvrière' party, and the miserably lousy
score of 3.41 percent for Robert Hue and the formerly
very powerful French Communist Party.
'Les Verts' Noël Mamère got
respectably above the five percent hurdle, and in face of
the events, Mamère said on TV that he would be
voting for Chirac in the second round. He also called
for massive demonstrations on Sunday, 1. May - 'worker's day'
in Europe.
While some of the ultra-leftist parties are not
overtly suggesting that their followers place their votes with Chirac
in the second round, the priority is clearly to put
a stop to Le Pen and his extremist National Front
party.
On the moderate right's side, there seems to be
little question of where the votes will go. The leader
of the UDF party, François Bayrou, had a campaign that
started from disaster, to finally arrive at a respectable score
of nearly seven percent.
Throughout the campaign mention was often
made of the 'third man.' At various times this
'alternative-candidate' was ex-socialist supporter, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, or the liberal-right Alain
Madelin, but Bayrou finally outdistanced them, mainly by not quitting
to campaign energetically.
Nearly all right-wing personalities who spoke on
TV said there was a need for 'rassemblement.' Coincidently, this
word - which means 'gathering' or 'assemblage' - forms part
of the name of Chirac's party - the RPR, or
'Rassemblement Pour le République.'
For a good many years, this
is exactly what the moderate right has not been doing
- which opened the opportunity for a coalition of leftists
and Socialists to form the government for the past five
years.
For the moderate-right, in face of Le Pen, the
coming choice is Chirac, or abstention. From both sides of
right and left, there are going to be some curious
elements 'rallying around Chirac.'
Jospin Decides To Resign
At 22:20,
Lionel Jospin accepted personal responsibility for his defeat and announced
his intention to retire from politics after the second round
of the presidential elections.
This shocked those gathered at Socialist
Party headquarters, who had earlier chanted 'No Pasaran!' when the
first images of Le Pen appeared on giant TV screens.
At Communist Party headquarters there was no victory party and
there were practically none there to celebrate it. Party leader
Robert Hue even had the embarrassment of being out-voted by
Jean-Marie Le Pen in his own polling district of Montigny-les-Cormeilles.
Nationally, the 3.41 percent of the votes gathered by the
Communist leader were the lowest ever accorded to the party.
For the first time since 1969, there will be no
leftist candidate running for the office of Président of France.
Anti-Le Pen Demos
At midnight, in Paris and around France,
anti-National Front demonstrations took place, with 10,000 gathering in Paris
at République and Bastille, to chant, "'F' comme Fascist, 'N'
comme Nazi." According to radio-news this afternoon and TV-news tonight,
these are continuing throughout France.
Late last night on France-2
TV, the actor Pierre Arditti, speaking from the Bastille, said,
"France doesn't deserve this. We begin the 'resistance.'." Photos from
the anti-Le Pen demo at Bastille last night were labeled
by the British trash-press today as 'riots.'
Paris Votes
Although
the left led by Bertrand Delanoë captured Paris in the
municipal elections last year, yesterday's vote saw Jacques Chirac outdistance
Lionel Jospin as he did seven years ago, although both
received fewer votes.
Le Pen, with about 9.35 percent of
the total, was unchanged from the last presidential elections, and
only got about half of his national average. Because of
Easter school vacations, abstentions in the city were higher than
the national average.
National Assembly Elections
Until yesterday it was
assumed that the presidential election would be a contest between
Jacques Chirac and Lionel Jospin. We now know this will
not be the case.
With a coalition of convenience to
prevent the election of Le Pen, Jacques Chirac is likely
to be reelected. This election will be followed by
the election of deputies to the National Assembly, and the
campaign for this started this morning.
During Mr. Chirac's last
tenure as president - a seven-year term, now shortened to
a five year term - his first government was formed
by a rightist coalition but it imploded after two years,
which required Mr. Chirac to ask Mr. Jospin to form
a government.
Finally, Sunday was a day for just walking
around.
This was done with a majority of Socialists, in
a coalition with the Communist Party and the 'Greens.' It
wasn't perfect, but it worked better than the rightist coalition
that preceded it.
Having a president of one party and
a prime minister of another is called 'co-habitation' in France,
and it is considered to be an unnatural political situation.
But for the moment, all attention is fixed on assuring
that Jacques Chirac is reelected Président of France on Sunday,
5. May 2002.
Then the left will get a chance
for a bit of revenge. The question here is, who
will the Socialists pick to be their leading candidate? As
of tonight, the question remains unanswered.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
