Saturday, January 27, 2007

Royal Pain

I mentioned I'd be trying to slip in some posts on the French presidential campaign, and while I was hoping to do a few backgrounders since coverage of foreign elections is pretty spotty in the States, things have heated up in the last few days.

A French impersonator named Gérard Dahan is known here for his telephone hoaxes. He once placed a call to Zinedine Zidane as President Jaques Chirac, and famously got Zizou and the entire French national team to place their hands over their hearts for the pre-game Marseillaise (an unusual gesture here in France).

Well, this week he got Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal to believe she was speaking to the Premier of Quebec, Jean Charest. And in the course of their conversation, Dahan/Charest compared Royal's recent controversial remarks in support of Quebec independence to a Canadian saying Corsica should be independent. To which Royal responded, "The French wouldn't disagree, by the way." Before breaking into laughter and adding, "Don't repeat that. That one there would cause an uproar in France. Keep it a secret." Little did she know.

To put it in context, Corsican nationalists have been engaged in a decades-long campaign to secure independence from France, a campaign that has included bombings of governmental buildings and assassinations of French governmental authorities and judges. Hardly a laughing matter here.

And although Royal's campaign tried, by turns, to brush the incident off as insignificant and accuse her opponent, UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, of dirty pool (Dahan is a known UMP sympathizer, although he denies being a party member), it's the latest in a series of ill-advised remarks ranging from the Middle East (where she claimed Iran should not even have civilian nuclear power) to China (she praised the efficiency of the Chinese justice system) to Quebec (both Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest roundly condemned her initial remarks as interference in Canadian internal affairs).

After coming out of nowhere to grab the Socialist Party nomination, based largely on charisma, popularity, and a vague promise to listen to the concerns of the French people before defining her platform, Royal has stumbled coming out of the gate, leaving the impression of a gaffe-prone candidate who can't be taken seriously.

It's still early, but unless Royal recovers quickly, one of the second-tier candidates, most likely centrist UDF candidate François Bayrou, ought to be able to capitalize on the anti-Sarkozy defectors she's bound to lose. In any event, the long-awaited showdown between Royal and Sarkozy has suddenly become far from certain.

Posted by Judah in:  La Presidentielle   

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