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EXPERTS, journalists as well as ordinary voters with good memories agree that the current presidential election in France is the most chaotic political bedlam they have ever witnessed in their lifetimes.
A record number of 11 candidates participated in the first round that took place on April 23; their programmes were as diverse as one could imagine. While the independent hopeful Jacques Cheminade promised to take the nation to planet Mars in order to escape overpopulation, global warming and atmosphere pollution, his closest rival Nathalie Arthaud appeared convinced that a Marxist revolution would immediately follow, once she was in power.
Next in the line was François Asselineau who apparently remembers by heart the entire European Union constitution, clause by clause word by word. He repeatedly spoke of an immediate exit, or Frexit if you prefer, as soon as he entered the Elysée Palace.
The champion of the first round is Macron. But appearances can be deceptive.
Another candidate who pledged an imminent blow-out of the capitalist hegemony was Philippe Poutou. He appeared in a number of TV debates with a five-day beard and dressed in a rumpled undershirt bringing to mind a poor worker who was forcefully dragged out of his bed at midnight.
Then there was the gigantic, big-voiced Jean Lassalle who speaks with a Pyrenean mountain accent and is reputedly able to converse with cows, sheep and goats. His agenda was based on turning the country into a farming enterprise that would depend entirely on its production of fruits, vegetables, grains, wines, milk, cheese and meat.
Perhaps unfortunately for France, all the five daydreamers ended up with one per cent, in some cases even less, of the votes.
But the biggest earthquake ever witnessed in the French democratic history was a total wipeout of the traditional right and left parties. No conservative, socialist or communist candidate is present in the second round tomorrow!
While the score of the Republican Party’s François Fillon, once prime minister of France and peremptorily considered a winner by successive opinion polls, remained stuck around the modest figure of 19pc, his supposedly biggest rival, the Socialist Party representative Benoit Hamon painfully managed to amass less than 6pc of the votes.
The champion of the first round is undoubtedly Emmanuel Macron with his score of 24pc. But appearances could be deceptive as there are many reasons to believe his connection with François Hollande, the Socialist Party president for another two days, remains for Macron an ineludible handicap.
An unknown and behind-the-scenes bank employee, Macron was appointed by the French president, first as adviser then as finance minister only three years ago. Last year, he resigned the post and announced his candidature. Neither of the left nor of the right as he claims, Macron formed his own party En Marche! (Move Forward!)
Though he lost no time in becoming a pop idol (he is only 39), Macron nevertheless remains François Hollande’s man; and that is no advantage given the current president’s pitiful five-year record of peak unemployment rate and the worst economic performance the country has ever experienced.
Macron’s abrupt public statements, though they please the suburban immigrant voters around the major cities of France including Paris, are nevertheless a shock to many people. “France has no culture of its own,” he said at one point. Then, at another occasion he announced that French colonisation was ‘a crime against humanity’. Many are of the opinion that Macron’s election would only ensure the repetition of Hollande’s disastrous policies for five more years.
His rival in tomorrow’s final round is Marine Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen who is the founder of National Front and is reputed for his often histrionic attacks on the leaders of both left and right. After winning a strong position vis-à-vis Macron in the first round, she announced last week she was not representing any political party but was a candidate of all the people of France.
Le Pen’s agenda includes freeing France from the dictatorial grip of the European Union bureaucracy and re-establishing the country’s borders that were rendered defunct by the Schengen Agreement. “Great Britain is today out of the European Union and it is not a ruined country as predicted by many,” she says.
(By the way, this may sound a bit off the subject but will interest Pakistani readers just the same that the first man to take the Brexit initiative was Imran Khan’s late father-in-law Sir James Goldsmith who had founded the Referendum Party in 1994. He died three years later, rather prematurely at age 64, without witnessing the success of his movement).
To come back to the French presidential election, the climax of the contradictions between the two finalists was a face-to-face television debate that lasted nearly three hours earlier this week. Once again, old-fashioned restraints and reciprocal politeness were set aside as the rivals in turns scathingly mocked each other.
At one point, when Emmanuel Macron made a somewhat astringent reference to the risk of having a woman as the president of France, Marine Le Pen promptly retorted: “My poor friend, you do not have much of a choice. Either you will have me as president or, in case you are elected, you will be receiving your orders from Angela Merkel!”
Next morning’s newspapers carried the details of the encounter and a majority of them proclaimed that Macron was heading towards an easy victory. But then, opinion polls had also announced a clean sweep by Hillary Clinton only a few months ago.
The unbearable suspense of tomorrow night will end exactly at 11 pm, Pakistan Standard Time!
The writer is a journalist based in Paris.
Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2017
