Euro-indifference

The European elections are but six days away, and yet the campaign has failed to generate much passion in France, or elsewhere, for that matter…
According to a recent poll, 57% of the French said that they had no interest in the campaign. It is thus widely feared that less than 50% of the electorate will bother to go the polls next Sunday.
Sarkozy’s party, the UMP, is faring rather well, considering the current economic and social context, and is expected to come out ahead with 26% of the vote, followed by the opposition Socialist party (le PS), with 20%.
Yesterday, Sarkozy and chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany wrote an op-ed urging all Europeans to vote in order to build a strong and vibrant Europe.
For that to happen, all Europeans will need to adopt the Lisbon treaty, designed to streamline European institutions, and facilitate decision-making within Europe, a union of twenty-seven members states. Ireland, which rejected the treaty in 2008, is expected to vote again this year and back the treaty.
The Socialist party is led by Martine Aubry, a former labor affairs minister in the Socialist government of Lionel Jospin, that governed France between 1997 and 2002. She was formerly also known as Madame 35 heures, for having lowered the work week in France from 39 to 35 hours…This legal limit, though reformed and amended by Sarkozy, is still the law of the land….
Le Mouvement Démocrate, a centrist party led by the fastidious and intransigent M. François Bayrou, an arch Sarkozy critic, is third with some 13% of the vote.
Finally, the last major list is Europe Ecologie, headed by the dynamic and flamboyant Daniel Cohn-Bendit (who, in May 1968, was known as Danny the Red , and was one of the leaders of the student movement) is expected to garner a robust 10% of the electorate…
Though, quite predictably, M. Sarkozy has been the main target of all the parties competing in the election, the focus of late has shifted somewhat, as both the Socialists and the UMP have been trying to undermine the meddlesome M. Bayrou…
François Hollande, former PS leader (and former companion of Ségolène Royal, who ran against Mr Sarkozy in 2007, and lost) and who harbors presidential ambitions of his own, declared in a radio interview : his method, I repudiate. The ideas, where are the ideas?
M. Hollande was no doubt referring to M. Bayrou’s strategy, which is to systematically criticize Sarkozy, at each and every opportunity, in order to position himself as the President’s principle opponent, and hopefully surf to victory on an anti-Sarkozy wave in the 2012 presidential elections.
He has just published a book here in France called Abuse of Power, a vitriolic attack on Sarkozy, his style and policies, which climbed to the top of the best seller list …
For her part, Mme Aubry denounced what she called Bayrou’s narcissism. Furthermore, she added, all that he thinks about is the presidential elections. All he talks about is Sarkozy and himself. He never talks about Europe, and never makes any proposals.
He reminds many here of the late former president François Mitterrand, who began his long political career on the right only to gradually shift to the left, according to his immediate political interests, for the right was then dominated by the formidable de Gaulle... He finally won the presidential election on his third try, in 1981, as a Socialist. He was a consummate politician, a devious and Machiavellian strategist (he was nicknamed the Florentine), who outwitted all his rivals and was a dominant political figure for some 40 years…
Bayrou’s many enemies dismiss him as a shallow opportunist, his numerous supporters praise the selfless patriot, the only one capable of saving France from Sarkozy’s ostentatious and Anglo-Saxon brand of free market politics….Time will tell which Bayrou finally emerges…
A new face ,however, has emerged during the campaign. No, it is not M. Lepen’s successor, for the 80-year-old veteran is still campaigning, though not as briskly as in the past, and his National Front is expected to woo 7% of the voters.
Her name is Nathalie Arnaud, a 39 year-old school teacher.
She has replaced the venerable Arlette Laguiller (universally known here as «Arlette»), an institution of French politics, as chief spokeswoman of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle, is a rough translation). Arlette had led the Trotskyite revolutionary party for over thirty years…In fact, she has participated in every French presidential election since 1974!
She traditionally began all her speeches, and Melle Arnaud continues the tradition, with 　travailleuses, travailleurs, camarades et amis (Workers-travailleuses being the feminine form of travailleurs-comrades and friends).
The party, in style and vocabulary, resembles the revolutionary organizations of the nineteenth century: the enemy of the working class is the bourgeoisie, a real class of exploiters, made of flesh and blood, Melle Arnaud tells her small but enthusiastic crowds.
The party is not expected to get much more than 1% of the vote…These are hard times indeed, even for revolutionaries…