Skip to main content

French Presidential Elections - Towards the Second Turn

Official logo of the French Republic
The first turn of the French presidential elections took place last week without any real surprise. The two favorites, Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal were selected to fight it out in the second turn on 6th May. They promptly went back to campaigning.

With a record turnout of 85% (compared to the apparently low 72% at the previous elections in 2002), the extremes probably had little chance to make any significant inroad: Nicolas Sarkozy came first with 30.5% of votes, Ségolène Royal gained 25.7%, François Bayrou did well with 18.6% of votes (from his 2002 score of 6.8%) and Le Pen only got 11% of votes. Neither Greens nor Communists came over 5% of the votes. This means they will no get a refund of their campaign costs by the state.

Royal and Sarkozy are now waiting for Bayrou (the centrist) to endorse either of them Bayrou has decided to leave the suspense as it is and said that he can't make a decision for his voters.

As I think I mentioned on my previous post on the elections, I am not really aware of the exact policies of the candidates. I am registered to the electoral list with the French consulate here in London and as such received a round robin email from all four favorites in advance of the first vote (I have already received another one from Sarkozy this week and am expecting Royal's anytime now). I only took the time to read the first two emails I received; those of Bayrou and Sarkozy. While Bayrou's seemed fairly reasonable, offering concrete solutions to problems that seem to be facing expats (mostly stuff about children's schooling it seems), Sarkozy. which was longer as I recall, was nothing but empty and meaningless rethoric on the theme of his interest in us and our interest. I dread to thing what Le Pen's contains.

I am really happy that I don't have to choose between the two remaining candidates. On the one hand, the socialist Royal seems to me utterly without clout and while she claims to want change she also seems to want to keep her party's old policies. On the other hand, Sarkozy is percieved as (almost) economically liberal (being often called the French Thatcher, also he is probably nothing as bad) and he probably is what the French economy needs. He is however in no way socially liberal and I don't that that this is what French society, which is truely in crisis, needs.

Still, it would be rather amusing to have a first female president named Royal, considering how the République itself came to being.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at

Rev. Peter Mullen's Blog

Rev. Peter Mullen is the chaplain to the London Stock Exchange and the rector of St Michael's Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City. Rev. Peter Mullen was also until recently a blogger. Sadly the result of his cyber labour seem to have been deleted but Google has thankfully cached some of it and I have saved a copy for posterity, just in case. The deletion of Rev. Mullen's writings might just have something to do with the fact that last week, the Evening Standard and then the Daily Mail published an article (the same article actually) about some of those very writings (even though the elements of said writings being quoted had been published in June this year, at the time of the blessing ceremony which took place between two members of the Church of England in St Bartholomew the Great - picture ). In the article, we learned what the Rev. thinks about gay people and what should be done to them: We ["Religious believers"] disapprove of homosexuality

Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison Swap Jerseys

I am having a bit of a vacuous evening looking at images of pretty rugby players. Addidas, with its latest viral campaign, Jersey Swap , seems to be squarely aiming at the gay market with a selection of five antipodean rugby players, visitor to the website can select and see take their tops off and... well... swap jersey (those interested can create posters too). My favorites of the bunch are Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison . The pictures of their pretty faces and bulging naked torsos (excuse me while I sit down for a second!) included to this post should tell you why. A job well done for Addidas. This will go round the Internet for a while, I think.