The Hardline Right Moves into the Élysee Palace - Sarkozy Wins the French Presidential Election
By : Jean-Paul Piérot - Friday May 11, 2007 By Jean-Paul Piérot Presidential Elections. With a record participation rate (85%), the French have given a majority to the UMP candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy (53%). The news wasn’t exactly unexpected, but it still represents a serious shock for millions of French voters, including for the majority of the younger generation, who learnt at 8 pm on Sunday 6 May that Nicolas Sarkozy had been elected to the Élysée Palace, with his 53% victory in the second round of the presidential (...)
read more, comments... Pétain to Sarkozy French National Revolution
By : JOHN HELLMAN - Friday May 11, 2007 By JOHN HELLMAN In his first speech to supporters after his election on May 6, 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy said the time had come for radical change in France : "The French have spoken. They want to break with the old ideas and way of doing things. That’s why I’ll make certain values honourable again. Work, for example, as well as authority, moral principles and respect." M. Sarkozy was elected with the overwhelming support of voters over 65, many of whom were fearful of ’civic (...)
read more, comments... Sarkozy set to unleash new French revolution
By : The Observer - Sunday May 6, 2007 The right’s candidate could canter home in today’s election -but that will do little to heal deep divisions still raging in France. As hope for Socialist Segolene Royal slips away, Jason Burke finds a nation polarised The scruffy streets outside the campaign headquarters of Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate apparently set to sweep to power in elections today, were calm. The multi-coloured, multi-ethnic market on the Rue Strasbourg Saint Denis nearby was not. Amid the (...)
read more, comments... Cherchez la femme: the mystery of Mme Sarkozy
By : Paris - Tuesday May 1, 2007 By John Lichfield in Paris Published: 25 April 2007 The French media is crammed with election coverage but has published, or broadcast, hardly a word on the topic that most obsesses the Paris media- political village. Eleven days before the second round of the presidential election, a legally-enforced code of silence surrounds the state of relations between the front-runner, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his wife, Cécilia. Mme Sarkozy, 49, briefly split with her husband two years ago and then (...)
read more, comments... Image, Anecdote, and Reality: Why Sarkozy Really Is to Be Feared
By : Patricia Alessandrini - Sunday April 29, 2007 or, How LePen Made the Second Round in the Disguise of Sarkozy By Patricia Alessandrini I have yet to see a Sarkozy poster in Paris – or even just a sticker with his name on it – that has not been defaced within a few hours of being posted. The fear and resentment here in regard to Sarkozy, especially in working-class neighborhoods, is palpable. The French left credits the record highs in voter enrollment and turnout for the presidential election of April 22 to anti-Sarko (...)
read more, comments... Where the French left stands and why it needs to defeat Nicolas Sarkozy
By : Mouvements - Sunday April 29, 2007 After the first round of balloting in the French presidential election, how can we evaluate the political dynamics now at work? Why are we convinced that – whatever our reservations – we must do everything in our power to assure the victory of Ségolène Royal in the second round? 1. In a time of generalized suspicion of politicians and parties, and in spite of a high percentage of undecided voters just before the polling, the very high level of participation (83.7% of (...)
read more, comments... French election heralds more battles to come
By : Alex Callinicos - Wednesday April 25, 2007 While much of the media sees the presidential elections as a return to “mainstream” politics in France, the true picture is more complicated, explains Alex Callinicos siege PCF Etampes By Alex Callinicos The first round of the French presidential elections last Sunday was haunted by its counterpart five years ago. On 21 April 2002 the Nazi leader Jean-Marie Le Pen pushed the Socialist Party prime minister Lionel Jospin into third place and out of the second round. But on (...)
read more, comments... Heightened political atmosphere in France sees huge numbers at meetings and rallies
By : Jim Wolfreys - Wednesday April 25, 2007 by Jim Wolfreys, in Paris On the face of it, the results of the French presidential election appear to represent a revival of mainstream parties. The Socialist Party’s Ségolène Royal, Nicolas Sarkozy, the right wing UMP candidate, and François Bayrou, of the centre right UDF, together won around 75 percent of the vote, compared to under 50 percent in 2002. But this resurgence does not represent renewed political affiliation with the mainstream. One French poll showed that a third (...)
read more, comments... French Election Results and Analysis: WHY SARKOZY IS DANGEROUS
By : Doug Ireland - Monday April 23, 2007 by Doug Ireland Here, direct from France 2 TV News (broadcast live in the States via TV 5, the international francophone channel) are the UPDATED exit poll projections from today’s first round of France’s two-stage presidential election: NICOLAS SARKOZY — UMP (conservative) 30.4% SEGOLENE ROYAL — Socialist Party 25% FRANCOIS BAYROU — UDF (centrist) 18.8% JEAN-MARIE LE PEN — Front National (neo-fascist) 11.1% This means that the Socialist Royal will (...)
read more, comments... The Euro-vision Contest
By : Chris Reynolds - Saturday April 21, 2007 Presidential candidate Ségolène Royal is officially leading the left in the race for the Elysée. Just don’t expect too much from the candidates There was a period earlier this autumn when European Commission President José Manuel Barroso must have wondered just how many other French presidential hopefuls would come knocking on his office door ahead of their official party nominations. The centre-right frontrunner and current Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy’s September 8th (...)
read more, comments... French Presidential Elections: The Left has to Stand Up!
By : Patrick Le Hyaric - Wednesday April 18, 2007 By Patrick Le Hyaric There are are only seven days to the election. Everything is still possible. The network of militants that is spreading out throughout the country can still avoid all the traps and create the conditions of a new hope. So, we say: Stand Up on the Left! Clearly, in the private offices of the French financial elite, they have decided to use, as never before, their considerable wealth and clout to divert the presidential and legislative elections from the real issues at (...)
read more, comments... Bayrou’s Journey to the Heart of the Chirac-d’Estaing Machine
By : Sébastien Crépel - Friday April 13, 2007 By Sébastien Crépel He has occupied every post on the political right. Today, his rebellious tone helps him hold his own when faced with a UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) converted to his same Euro-liberalism. Francois Bayrou is the archetypal man of the same ‘system’ that he is denouncing; even more so of the UMP-ex-RPR-UDF majority that governed France for nearly 20 years starting in 1974, for which he was local counselor, deputy, and minister. Originally a protégé of (...)
read more, comments... 2007 Presidential Campaign : Humiliated, the "Beur" Minister Defects ... to the Right
By : Jean-Paul Piérot - Friday April 13, 2007 By Jean-Paul Piérot The lesson under Villepin and Sarkozy was bitter enough. But why on earth did Azouz Begag join the team in the first place? And why must he now bind himself to Bayrou, Villepin’s "centre-right " (right-wing)challenger? The team he joined was a nest of vipers. His entry into Villepin’s government in 2005 surprised many, even beyond the circle of his friends. That he, a Beur (1), son of Algerian immigrants who grew up on a rundown suburban estate near Lyon (...)
read more, comments... France’s presidential elections: Much ado about nothing in Guadeloupe
By : caribbean net news - Friday April 13, 2007 By Danik Ibraheem Zandwonis Caribbean Net News Guadeloupe Correspondent POINT A PITRE, Guadeloupe: The campaign for France’s presidential elections, which has been just completed in Guadeloupe, has not caught the attention of the voters. In spite of the visits of presidential candidates and of an important media group, the inhabitants of Guadeloupe seemed rather indifferent to the different programmes. Surveys and abstention. What is new this year? The surveys by Qualistat (...)
read more, comments... Bombings in North Africa — neocon Psyops to influence French presidential election?
By : Editor - Friday April 13, 2007 More false flag terror attacks prior to French presidential elections? Just days prior to the French presidential election which pits anti-North African Muslim conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, supported by the international neo-con clique, against a Socialist and centrist candidate, bombs have gone off in Algeria and Morocco. The attacks have been blamed on "Al Qaeda," the neo-cons’ favorite (and likely controlled) bogeyman. Three car bomb attacks killed 33 people in Algiers. A group (...)
read more, comments... Is Sarkozy going too far?
By : frenchelection.info - Thursday April 12, 2007 As the election draws closer, Nicolas Sarkozy pushes further the conservative, right-wing agenda that has made him famous as interior minister. The man who once used to dub youths from disadvantaged suburbs "scum", promised to clean crime-ridden neighbourhoods with a "Kärcher" industrial pressure cleaner and forced a publishing house to cancel the launch of a biography of his wife Cécilia is at it again. Last month,he promised to establish a ministry of immigration and national identity if (...)
read more, comments... Sarkozy to the US: "I’m your free friend"
By : France - Monday March 12, 2007 Nicolas Sarkozy detailed his foreign policy programme this week in Paris in a hotel conference room packed with international journalists. The place was too small to seat all the visiting Chinese, Hungarian, American, Brazilian colleagues - to name only a few nationalities. The candidate started his speech with a vibrant homage to Jacques Chirac’s foreign policy: " I approve of everything that was done for 12 years", he said. Chirac "restored the Blue Helmets’ honour in (...)
read more, comments... Why is the left so gauche?
By : Patrice de Beer - Monday March 5, 2007 The French presidential campaign is a clear example of how difficult it can be for the left, in a democratic country, to achieve power. It raises a perennial question: why is the left always so disorganised, divided by internecine and self-destructive squabbles in countries where the political spectrum is, roughly, equally divided? In France in particular - which since 1978 has voted every government (left or right) out of office after one term - why does the outgoing interior minister and (...)
read more, comments... Can the Presidential Election Change France’s Foreign Policy?
By : Rosa Moussaoui - Thursday February 15, 2007 Interview by Rosa Moussaoui ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE : Nicolas Sarkozy shaking the hand of a George W. Bush caught up in the Iraqi mess, Ségolène Royal posing for photographers on the Great Wall of China…These pictures cannot be a substitute for a foreign policy programme. In the context of international tensions, where globalisation blurs the boundaries between domestic and foreign matters on a daily basis, Pascal Boniface (1), director of the Institute of International Relations (...)
read more, comments... Marie-George Buffet Blows the Whistle
By : Hervé Fuyet - Monday February 5, 2007 By Pierre-Henri Lab, Special correspondent, Besançon (Doubs) ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE : M.-G. Buffet tire le signal d’alarme Marie-George Buffet, now officially candidate in the French presidential election only two months away, appeals urgently for unity of the political Left against the political Right. During her electoral meeting in the province of Franche-Comté in south-eastern France, Marie-George Buffet called on the political Left to “act responsibly, since the victory (...)
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