Monday, January 29, 2007

The Third Man

My longshot bet to win the French presidential election, François Bayrou, has been making up ground in the aftermath of Ségolène Royal's choppy campaign debut. According to the latest polls, he's now climbed into third place with 14% of likely voters. While he still trails Sarkozy and Royal by a significant margin (Sarko 31%, Royal 29%), he's trending upwards. Most importantly, he's overtaken Jean Marie Le Pen, the ultra-nationalist right-wing candidate who traumatised the country by sneaking into the second round of balloting in 2002. (In France, anyone who collects signatures from 500 French mayors can appear on the ballot. The top two vote-getters from the first round face off in the second round two weeks later.)

In a country traditionally torn by right-left cleavages, Bayrou has steered his party, the centrist UDF, clear of entangling alliances with either. The advantage? People are genuinely tired of politics as usual, and are looking for a valid alternative. The disadvantage? French culture is instinctively conflictual, especially the political culture. People here are naturally distrustful of someone who won't come down on one side of an issue or the other. So while Bayrou's stock is beginning to rise with voters, he's already suffered some defections within his own party, where dissatisfaction with the UDF's refusal to participate in the right-of-center UMP government caused a number of Assembly-members to jump ship and endorse Sarkozy. It doesn't help that Bayrou is widely considered to "have the charisma of a coffee table."

Something tells me, though, that this campaign has still got some surprises left. To begin with, Sarkozy, while solidly backed by the governing UMP, is thoroughly detested by Chirac and his loyalists. There's also the question of Chirac's lingering legal worries from his days as mayor of Paris catching up to him as soon as his Presidential immunity comes to an end. So unless a backroom deal is struck to make those worries disappear, there's no guarantee that Chirac, whose known as "The Serial Killer" for all the political rivals he's left for dead, won't run one of his cronies to split the rightwing vote.

As for Royal, unless she recovers soon and strongly, one of her defeated rivals from within the Socialist Party (I'm counting on former Mitterand-era Prime Minister Laurent Fabius) might very well announce an independent run, effectively splitting the Socialist vote and putting Bayrou very much in the running.

I'll have more on the candidates' platforms, as well as some differences between the American and French political cultures and why any of this matters in the next few days.

Posted by Judah in:  La Presidentielle   

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