Tales from the Barn: French presidential election shows Sarkozy's pants on fire!

Back to civilisation for a few days this week after being ‘incommunicado’ on our timber framing site. We return to the job today but before I go there is time to have a quick look at the French ‘présidentielles’, with the second and final round coming up on Sunday. President Sarkozy and François Hollande, the ‘normal guy’ standing for the Parti Socialiste, go head to head after a tight first round (28.6% for Hollande and 27.2% for ‘Sarko’).

It is strange watching the elections from the perspective of someone who does not have the vote. To vote in French national elections you must be a Citizen. This has been a matter of some debate where it concerns the many migrant workers who come from French ex-colonies to work and pay taxes but have no democratic representation at the national level. As for us, we will be able to vote in the local elections, so for the time being we have to content ourselves with a say in local democracy.

These elections have seen a new group of enfranchised people though. No, not the hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers but those French ex-pats who live in the UK and other northern European countries. This new slice of the electorate created by Sarkozy is known as the ‘Northern Europe’ constituency. The new voters, many of whom are well-heeled business people and diplomats, have duly voted for Sarko above Hollande (just). Sarkozy has done everything he can to snatch victory from the hands of defeat.

The fight is heating up now. The online journal ‘Médiapart’ have been plugging away at the alleged scandal of illegal political party funding from Libya that has dogged Sarkozy during his 2012 campaign. Over the weekend they claimed to have proof, in the form of a signed document, that the Libyan regime agreed to fund Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign. Sarkozy has responded angrily with cries of “infamy” and suggested that the journal is under the influence of the Parti Socialiste. As Médiapart regularly criticise members of the Left as well, this would seem unlikely.

In France there is now a left-wing grouping with electoral clout, as well as the moderate ‘Parti Socialiste’. The Front de Gauche was created in 2009 as a coalition of left-wing parties, with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the Parti de Gauche (the ‘Left Party’) as its presidential candidate.

However, it is not the Front de Gauche that troubles Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party, but Marine Le Pen of the far right ‘Front National’. Now that she has seen off his attempts to filch her vote by appealing to “hard-working families” who are “worried about immigration”, she wants to see Sarkozy defeated. Disappointed with Sarko’s failure to deliver on his tough talking in 2007, her voters are unlikely to vote for him in the second round.

Mélenchon’s Front de Gauche claim that they have built up the socialist vote back to the level of the early 1980s. Now they are poised to vote the more moderate Parti Socialiste back into power, which is what Ségolène Royal (also Hollande’s ex-wife) lacked in 2007. In my regional paper, Sud-Ouest, disgruntled party officials complain at the result and at the party’s distance from its urban working-class core vote, but their 11% was not to be sniffed at and may even be the sign of a resurgent Left in French politics. They also claim to have diverted votes away from the far right and even - on their own website - to have prevented Le Pen from beating Sarkozy at the first round in key areas.

In Dordogne, where we live, ‘Ségo’ would have won even in 2007 as she had 53% of the vote in the second round. Another contrast with the UK is how the countryside votes: the map of first round votes in our regional paper shows a ‘pink’ region, if not bright red. The simple two-word explanation of this difference is no doubt ‘land ownership’.

Perhaps the biggest difference of all is the sheer level of participation, at 80% even in the first round (more people tend to come out in the second round). The UK has not seen such levels since 1951, when Churchill was voted in for a second term. Some people suggest that voting on a Sunday helps enormously, as Thursdays – the voting day in the UK – are working days for most voters.

That the French are willing to get out and vote may also go all the way back to the 1789 revolution and their sense that they have the power to change the régime that governs them, even if the new one may not deliver on its promises. Which leads me to my favourite quote this week, from a 71-year-old café regular interviewed by Médiapart in Cahors, about two hours’ drive south of here: “Sarkozy, bon vent, la paille au cul, le feu devant” – “Sarkozy, arse on straw, a good wind and fire to the fore!”