PARIS: Will it, or won’t it be “The Blue House”? France’s ruling party, the UMP, which engineered Jacques Chirac’s landslide victory in last May’s presidential election is having problems coming up with a new name.
The UMP, which stands for Union pour la Majorite Presidentielle (Union for a Presidential Majority), needs to come up with a new appellation, if only because its present name was always intended to be temporary.
The label was created uniquely to allow the coalition assembled by Mr Chirac around his Gaullist RPR (Rassemblement pour la Republique) party to win last Spring’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
Several months later, the UMP label is still being used, and Mr Chirac, for one, would like to see his party given a new name, one, in any case, which won’t suggest that he is still looking for a new majority, his forces having also handily won control of the French National Assembly.
For the moment, a French communications agency, Happy Day, has proposed “The Blue House” as the UMP’s new appellation, saying that blue, which has always symbolised the French Right, also happens to be the favourite colour of the French. But then, it also evokes other ideas that UMP leaders would rather not allude to at the present moment.
Says one UMP bigwig, Claude Goasguen: “for me, it reminds me of a tawdry nightclub nextdoor to where I lived as a child, that had to be shut down.” As for one of the original proponents of the “Blue House” label, former Prime Minister — and Chirac confidant — Alain Juppe, he had to jokingly assure UMP parliamentarians that “we’re not going to turn you into Smurphs,” a reference to the blue-coloured cartoon characters that were a favourite with children a decade ago, when Mr Juppe was himself last in power.
Other deputies noted that “blue” connotated depression, a state of mind that certainly doesn’t — at least yet — characterise UMP parliamentarians, still exhilitaring from this year’s series of spectacular victories.
One noted that blue was also the colour of such French kings as Louis XVI, who was guillotined in 1793 during the French Revolution.
He also said “Blue House” might unnecessarily connote The White House in Washington, another presidential residence, that of George W Bush, a man with whom Mr Chirac feels he’s been much too associated in recent weeks.
Then too, says another deputy, the Happy Day communications agency that came up with the name in the first place is based at Dunkirk, the site of a major military fiasco at the start of World War II, and if there’s something with which the UMP doesn’t want to be associated, it’s certainly not the idea of defeat.
Given the overwhelming disapproval of “The Blue House” - on which parliamentarians will vote during a special congress scheduled for November 17 - party leaders are proposing two alternatives. The UMP’s provisional president, Philippe Douste-Blazy, says: “Why not simply call it ‘L’Union,’ a simple word which says what we’re all about,” although Mr Juppe immediately retorted that “although it’s a nice word, it does evoke the name of one of France’s leading insurance companies.”
That leaves the idea just proposed by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who says: “Why not keep the same UMP initials, which have become an everyday household word in France, and just change the words they stand for. For example, UMP could mean as well: Union pour une Majorite de Progres, Union for a Majority for Progress?”
And, Mr Raffarin being himself a former communications professional, the idea seems to be making its way around the powers that be in Paris. “Above all,” he notes philosophically, “You just don’t change a winning idea.”