Menton: France: Segolene Royal, the fifty-three year old politician, has won the nomination to be the Socialist candidate in the French presidential election in the spring of 2007. Against two rivals, the old “elephants” as they were called, Royal won over 60 per cent of the votes cast. Just over 200,000 party members voted in the contest in which individual members decided the issue. She has become the first woman to be in a position to be elected president of the French Republic.
The elephants she defeated were Laurent Fabius, famous for having become France’s youngest prime minister ever when he was named to the position in 1984 by President Francois Mitterrand. The last two decades have not been kind to the boy wonder of the Socialist Party who ended up third in the race with 18 per cent of the vote. The second place candidate, with just over 20 per cent of the vote, was Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former economic minister of France, whose career was soiled when he was embroiled in a kick-back scheme to finance the Socialist Party, an offence all too common among French politicians.
The struggle for the nomination was nasty. Supporters of her opponents tried to throw Segolene Royal off her stride with their boisterous behaviour during all-candidates debates. Both Fabius and Strauss-Kahn seemed to believe that the nomination should come to people like them, men with long histories in the French political wars, and not a woman, who appears not to be a member of the country’s political class. But that is where they made their miscalculation. In France, the political class is a species wondrous to behold, made up of men who have been in the limelight for decades. When I came to France in 1986 to spend a year here for the first time, I grew familiar, during evening telecasts, with many of the politicians who are still to be seen today.
Even more than is the case with politicians in other countries, there is a separation between the members of the political class and the people. Politicians, of whatever political stripe, speak in the same tones, with their regional accents stamped out, and with a supply of rhetoric that is stupefying. For those who become big time players, political life goes on forever, as these personalities slowly grow into caricatures of themselves. That is what happened to Fabius and Strauss-Kahn.
Naturally, for their kind and for the aging men who are attached to their kind of politics, there is wonderment and alarm about what is being called Segomania in France. I encountered a well-educated, aging man in Menton today who expressed the view that Royal is an air-head who has managed to charm a large number of people with little more than a winning smile. For many who are in shock, the dismissal of the victorious candidate is a coded attack against the idea that any woman could be ready to become the president of the republic.
In truth Segolene Royal is a very experienced politician, who has served in the cabinet, and who has learned the hard-knuckle game of French politics. But she has managed to do it with a style of communication that is something new in France. While she summons plenty of dignity in her speeches and public appearances, she doesn’t talk like a politician. She speaks with clarity about the problems of working people, women and minorities in France in a way the country has not seen. She communicates easily with people, whether they are homeless, those without papers to remain in the country, or are members of France’s economic and political elites. She talks of a new and more inclusive French society in a way that calls up a vision of the future, in sharp contrast to the elephants in her party who seemed mired in the wars of the past. She generates hope like no candidate of the left since Francois Mitterrand in his greatest days.
Now she faces the great struggle that will be decided in the months to come---the battle, almost certainly against Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, for the presidency. While the right has not yet picked its candidate, Sarkozy is presumed by almost everyone to be the standard-bearer.
Like Royal, he does not communicate in the orotund tones of the political class. He speaks to his adherents with a spare and pugnacious directness. His appeal is to those who are insecure, whatever their rank in French society---insecure about the effects of globalization, about the rising visibility of North Africans and Muslims in France, and about the capacity of France to count for something in the world of the 21st century. His stock-in-trade is fear, which is why he is always on the scene within hours of a social outburst in one of the dispiriting suburbs of the great French cities.
There is an almost unnatural energy about Sarkozy as he strides to a microphone with gendarmes in the background. He is the little tough guy who is promising to straighten this country out. It scarcely matters to his adherents that he is wedded to the liberal economics (we would call these views neo-con) that visits the tempest of globalization on businesspeople and workers alike.
France is facing one of the major political turning points of its history. For over two centuries, the forces of expanding democracy and of reaction have been in contention, sometimes with one side in the ascendancy, sometimes the other. The trump card in Sarkozy’s frenetic crusade of the right is race. While he codes his message in a way that the right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National, does not, he is clear enough in what he intends. Sarkozy promises to put the trouble makers in their place, back into the shadows, where they cannot trouble the citizenry at large. The mailed-fist of the uncompromising state would be his weapon. And he has shown that he knows how to use it.
Two alternative political courses are in view, the one that leads to a broader democracy and the other that leads to repression.
The elephants she defeated were Laurent Fabius, famous for having become France’s youngest prime minister ever when he was named to the position in 1984 by President Francois Mitterrand. The last two decades have not been kind to the boy wonder of the Socialist Party who ended up third in the race with 18 per cent of the vote. The second place candidate, with just over 20 per cent of the vote, was Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former economic minister of France, whose career was soiled when he was embroiled in a kick-back scheme to finance the Socialist Party, an offence all too common among French politicians.
The struggle for the nomination was nasty. Supporters of her opponents tried to throw Segolene Royal off her stride with their boisterous behaviour during all-candidates debates. Both Fabius and Strauss-Kahn seemed to believe that the nomination should come to people like them, men with long histories in the French political wars, and not a woman, who appears not to be a member of the country’s political class. But that is where they made their miscalculation. In France, the political class is a species wondrous to behold, made up of men who have been in the limelight for decades. When I came to France in 1986 to spend a year here for the first time, I grew familiar, during evening telecasts, with many of the politicians who are still to be seen today.
Even more than is the case with politicians in other countries, there is a separation between the members of the political class and the people. Politicians, of whatever political stripe, speak in the same tones, with their regional accents stamped out, and with a supply of rhetoric that is stupefying. For those who become big time players, political life goes on forever, as these personalities slowly grow into caricatures of themselves. That is what happened to Fabius and Strauss-Kahn.
Naturally, for their kind and for the aging men who are attached to their kind of politics, there is wonderment and alarm about what is being called Segomania in France. I encountered a well-educated, aging man in Menton today who expressed the view that Royal is an air-head who has managed to charm a large number of people with little more than a winning smile. For many who are in shock, the dismissal of the victorious candidate is a coded attack against the idea that any woman could be ready to become the president of the republic.
In truth Segolene Royal is a very experienced politician, who has served in the cabinet, and who has learned the hard-knuckle game of French politics. But she has managed to do it with a style of communication that is something new in France. While she summons plenty of dignity in her speeches and public appearances, she doesn’t talk like a politician. She speaks with clarity about the problems of working people, women and minorities in France in a way the country has not seen. She communicates easily with people, whether they are homeless, those without papers to remain in the country, or are members of France’s economic and political elites. She talks of a new and more inclusive French society in a way that calls up a vision of the future, in sharp contrast to the elephants in her party who seemed mired in the wars of the past. She generates hope like no candidate of the left since Francois Mitterrand in his greatest days.
Now she faces the great struggle that will be decided in the months to come---the battle, almost certainly against Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, for the presidency. While the right has not yet picked its candidate, Sarkozy is presumed by almost everyone to be the standard-bearer.
Like Royal, he does not communicate in the orotund tones of the political class. He speaks to his adherents with a spare and pugnacious directness. His appeal is to those who are insecure, whatever their rank in French society---insecure about the effects of globalization, about the rising visibility of North Africans and Muslims in France, and about the capacity of France to count for something in the world of the 21st century. His stock-in-trade is fear, which is why he is always on the scene within hours of a social outburst in one of the dispiriting suburbs of the great French cities.
There is an almost unnatural energy about Sarkozy as he strides to a microphone with gendarmes in the background. He is the little tough guy who is promising to straighten this country out. It scarcely matters to his adherents that he is wedded to the liberal economics (we would call these views neo-con) that visits the tempest of globalization on businesspeople and workers alike.
France is facing one of the major political turning points of its history. For over two centuries, the forces of expanding democracy and of reaction have been in contention, sometimes with one side in the ascendancy, sometimes the other. The trump card in Sarkozy’s frenetic crusade of the right is race. While he codes his message in a way that the right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National, does not, he is clear enough in what he intends. Sarkozy promises to put the trouble makers in their place, back into the shadows, where they cannot trouble the citizenry at large. The mailed-fist of the uncompromising state would be his weapon. And he has shown that he knows how to use it.
Two alternative political courses are in view, the one that leads to a broader democracy and the other that leads to repression.
4 comments:
Looks like it will be an interesting race to watch. I hope Royal wins. She seems like someone with new ideas who can make the Socialist Party relevant to voters again.
I hope the French left avoids the kind of vote splitting that enabled Jean Marie LePen to make it to the final round in the last Presidential elections.
It will be new dawn for France if Royal wins the next election. It will one election to watch and if Royal wins, will take Europe into a different direction.
Your description of Royal's style of communication summarizes her appeal and at least to me shows a shift toward more American style politics. I wouldn't be as negative toward Nicolas Sarkozy, he is a politician, and needs to ensure that he gets the votes of the far-right. His economic ideas are also more "democratic" or at least capitalist than Royal's.
French Election 2007
i am not so keen on Sarkosy, for one he has bad mouthed the people in the suburbs by basically calling them scum, i hope sego wins as there needs to be a change in opinions in french politics. women are not just for cooking and cleaning!!!!!
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