Advertisement
Courtyard of the Lycée Racine
A steady stream of people flowed into "my school" (I live on the top floor) to vote. 1re tour, April 22, 2007. NEWS FLASH! Nicolas Sarkozy is the new president of France!!!!
On Sunday, May 6, the French population elected UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy over Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal in an electoral battle for the "new face of France".
Following the victory of the conservative/moderate-right candidate for the 2007 presidential elections in France, the 6th president of the 5th Republic is Nicolas Sarkozy (popularly named "Sarko" by fans and detractors alike) of the UMP party.
Everything has been culmining towards this point since the acceleration of the political campaigning in October, and finally the marathon has come to an end. With a participation rate that puts America to shame (almost 84%!), over 19 million voters chose Sarkozy, against about 16 million for Ségo, giving him a comfortable margin of victory as a "mandate" for his ambitious package of reforms that he hopes to pass this summer during his "honeymoon" period. First, however, he has to secure a majority in the French parliament, or else submit to a cohabitation power-sharing arrangement in which the Prime Minister would represent an opposition party (the Socialists, most likely). So, the drama and suspense is attenuated but still not totally resolved!
For those
Faire la queue
Voting lines exist in France too...although ours was not so bad. of you who are unfamiliar with the slightly bizarre French political system, let me fill in some background info. (I've become something of an amateur political analyst during my time here, endlessly decomposing all the political manoeuvres and strategies with my political-science afficionado friends!)
The French have a mixed presidential-parliamentary system, which means that they elect a president with a majoritarian vote. It's basically like our American system, except that the popular vote actually counts...(none of this electoral commission nonsense that gave us Bush in 2000 after the Supreme Court non-democratic intervention). However, there is ALSO a parliament, although it is UNlike most European countries. (Frequently, seats are based on a proportional representation system. In that system, each party presents a list of candidates in each territorial region, and the number that they send to parliament depends on the PARTY score in that department. This is how local, regional and European elections are run in France.) In France, voters vote for an individual candidate, but this system still favors the creation of multiple parties, which explains why there are around 15 political parties in France and TWELVE of them presented presidential candidates in this election (there were 16 in
My voting poll station
Pretty much all the civic and muicipal building are "borrowed" to make temporary voting polls. 2002!)
The president has strong powers, but it fairly dependent on the Parliament to pass his laws. Hence his (or her, if Ségolène had won) desire to have his party control the Parliament. The parliament consists of the Assemblée Nationale and the Sénat, and similar to England, the lower-chamber Assemblée holds most of the power. There are 577 deputés in it. The President has the power to dissolve the Assembly, but he better make darn sure his party will win the new elections...that was a hard lesson learned by Jacques Chirac in 1997, when he foolishly called elections, saw his party lose them, and had to share power with the Socialist PM! (This period is called cohabitation).
So those are the basics. Nicolas Sarkozy succeeds Jacques Chirac, also of the UMP conservative party, but there is no love lost between them. The result is another hard failure for the left in France, as the Socialist Party has now lost 3 elections in a row. Sarkozy will be in power for 5 years, starting May 16, and he hopes to capitalize on the rightward-shift of the French electorate to implement his reforms. He, like some other *cough* conservative presidents
Candidate Posters
Each candidate gets their own poster space, and during the official campaign month, they all are given exactly the same amount of air time on TV and radio! Very French I know, represents the affluent upper classes of society, and cannot even go into some of the unsettled metropolitan suburbs around Paris where he is considered a sort of "gnome from hell" (according to one French person I talked to). LOL. Actually, it's sad, because the social situation in France in very tenuous right now and I don't think his social policies are going to do much to diminish the poor-rich/white-immigrant clivages that divide the country. However, his package of pro-Europe, economically liberal policies are fairly promising, so perhaps a lower unemployment rates and a rising PPP will resolve the social unrest. Those are big "IFs", though, and we all know that trickle-down has a mixed record. I think a more dynamic economy will help in many ways, but it is also the herald of the end of the traditional French social-protection system built after WWII. We'll see...
Here's how the 2007 elections played out. They were fascinating. I say "they" because there are 2 rounds of voting for both the presidential and the legislative elections. For the first round, 12 parties presented candidates, and the "official" campaign period opened a month before the first round of voting (held
Nicolas Sarkozy
Not beloved by all of the French...especially the youth... on April 22 2007). They were literally from all over the political spectrum, from Trotskyists to Greens to supranationalists to the racist, anti-immigration Front National (whose candidate made it to the second round in 2002! Major shock). Traditionally the right (currently called the UMP) and the socialists (center-left) are the two dominant parties, but the small parties play a huge role in stealing votes. In 2002 Jean-Marie Le Pen, the racist candidate of the Front National, actually beat the Socialist candidate in the first round, prompting a round of anti-Le Pen manifestations all over France). In the first round of voting everyone pretty much votes for his or her favorite candidate, and the two with the best scores advance to the second round. Technically you can win with a majority of 50%+1 in the first round, but this will never happen in a country with 15 parties!!!! So after April 22, 2007, the two candidates remaining were Nicolas Sarkozy of the UMP (with a "historic" score of 31%) and Ségolène Royal of the Socialists (26%). The first round stimulated a TON of interest with a largely disillusioned and frustrated French electorate, and the debates and political commentators had plenty to
Ségolène Royal
This was a bad picture...she changed it for the second round of voting run through the grist mill running up to the election. I followed the campaign day-by-day with my friends at Sciences Po!
The most interesting aspects of the 1st round were:
-the terrible scores for all the small parties, in particular the left. None of them got more than 5%, and the most hovered between 1-2%. Trend: electoral shift to the RIGHT!
-lowest score for the Front National and Le Pen since 1974 (10.44%) Lesson: reaction against his shock-1st-round victory in 2002 which was more a protest vote than an actual desire for his racist, nationalist program.
-great score for the centrist UDF candidate François Bayrou (19%). From now on, there may actually be a true center party in France! About time, in my opinion. If France REALLY didn't want Sarkozy in power, they should have elected Bayrou in the first round: he was the only candidate who would have easily beaten either Sarkozy OR Royal in the second round. However, the clivage gauche-droite (left-right) took it's toll, and he finished third. In this game, there can only be one winner, and unfortunately it wasn't him! I think he would have been the best choice.
-as
Rue de Solférino
Crowd before the 1st round results announcement at PS headquarters soon as the results were announced, I knew Sarkozy would be the president. He maintained a 6% lead in the polls throughout the 2 weeks leading up to the second round, and the result was never really in question after the elimination of Bayrou. Boohoo.
So basically, the entire game was played out in the 1st round, when the stakes were higher but not quite as clear and simple for the voters. It's hard to keep track of 12 different candidates, so perhaps the Socialists didn't realize that Ségo couldn't win. Or perhaps they were too loyal (stubborn?) to vote for a centrist ("he's a disguised conservative!!!!" Heard that one frequently.)
In either case, they are going to have to live with the second round result: Sarkozy 53%; Ségolène 47%. Fairly resounding victory.
So where was I in all of this, besides reading the newspapers and giving exposés on the subject? Well, I spent the 1st tour at Sciences Po at a "Soirée Electorale" radio program taped there, listening to commentary by Sciences Po profs and political experts. And I walked by the Socialists' HQ on rue de Solférino (5 minutes from school) to watch them celebrate
their victory. Cool. Hope they enjoyed the fleeting taste of joy...
The second round was even cooler, even though there was little suspense in it for me. I went to the UMP party HQ on rue de la Boetie with four of my friends, where we joined the crush of people packing the street to watch the official release of the results (Not before 20h00 or you get fined!!!!) It was a crazy, charged atmosphere: blue balloons and french flags everywhere, masses of white, upper-class Parisians cheering, singing the Marseillaise, and chanting "Sarko...Président! Sarko...Président!", and even some jeers whenever a Socialist appeared on the big-screen TV. (How gracious). I could barely move the crowd was so big, and the place went absolutely wild when the TV showed "Nicolas" as the future president of the country. We stayed for his acceptance speech, and then the entire crowd started to flow towards the Place de la Concorde, the traditional celebration place for the UMP. A giant stage back by the tricolor had been erected just in front of the entrance to the Tuileries Gardens, and from about 9:30 on the biggest street party in Paris started to roll, feeding on the
Socialist Party HQ
AFTER the results...party time! energy of some 30,000 militants and supporters packing the square. (Well, not packed...it's damn big!) I actually went home at 9pm from the UMP HQ (because it's only 10 min. on foot from my apartment!), largely because I was lazy and I wanted to console my host-mom, Dominique. She is a fervent Socialist supporter, and I knew she'd be devasted. I was right. When I got home the TV was on, the lights were off, and the tears were flowing. "C'est une catastrophe!" And so it is...for 47% of the French population. Imagine the polarity of the 2004 US presidential elections, and you have an idea of the ideological tension of this past weekend. A lot is going to change, and there are a lot of people who are mortally afraid of what Sarko is going to do. Not only Dominique- there are a lot of UMP voters who find Sarko "unnerving", largely because of his very autocratique, anti-immigrant stance, and his hard line on security. I personally don't like him very much, but the "pocketbook vote" won out this time. We'll have to see what follows...
As for me, I am VERY glad to have been neutral for
once. 2004 was hard enough for me, and I totally understand the feelings of anger, alienation, fear, disgust, and despair felt by Dominique and others. I didn't like either of the final two candidates, so my presence at UMP party HQ was purely a sociological "observation" study! And then later, when I decided to go join the block party at Concorde...well, that was just free music!!!! ; ) Who wants to miss an opportunity to rock out with 10,000 young, ecstatic people in the iconic central square of Paris following a charged presidential election? Not me! So from 11-1 I joined the party, which was absolutely awesome, and even got to listen to Bob Sinclaire's set. (Awesome DJ). It was amazing.
I'll let those pictures speak for themselves, and someday I'll figure out how to post up my videos. What a campaign, and what a weekend! Not bad for a Sunday night in May...the biggest nightclub in Paris AND political excitement...perfect for a political science college student like me!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.108s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 10; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0678s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
