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The "Peasant" President
From Paris comes news that McDonald's-smashing former "peasants' confederation" leader José Bové is running for president.
The anti-globalisation demagogue declared yesterday that he would be the ideal candidate to unite France's various far-left sects with the left-wing of the establishment Socialist Party. Whether or not the leaders of these sects - who traditionally enjoy running for the presidency themselves - will accept Bové as a unifier remains to be seen.
In the first round of every recent presidential campaign, a collection of extreme-left, anti-globalisation communist/Trotskyite groups nail a substantial percentage of the vote: In 2002, they polled over 20 percent. Socialist disillusion with candidate Lionel Jospin is said to have contributed to his failure to reach the second round, where the incumbent faced far-right demagogue Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Could the same happen again in 2007? Speaking in Libération, Bové claimed that Ségolène Royal, the overwhelming choice of Socialist voters for the candidacy, "represented the PS's right wing." Royal almost certainly does not enjoy the same support among PS members as she does among voters, and Bové is sure to be planning to appeal to disgruntled Socialists in his pitch.
Indeed, EURSOC speculated two years ago on how a "perfect storm" of government meltdown, quarrelling Socialists, and a disintegrating social order in the troublesome housing estates could propel both Bové and his right wing equivalent Le Pen to the run-off. Obviously such a situation is quite unlikely, but no-one expect Le Pen to beat Jospin. What's more likely is that the emergence of a far-left "unity" candidate will rattle mainstream Socialists who fear a repeat of 2002 more than the Doomsday Scenario of a Le Pen - Bové runoff.
Funny: Jacques Chirac has spent most of his time as president avoiding the cops: Bové, by contrast, revels in his ability to attract the wrath of the law. He owes his fame to smashing up a McDonald's restaurant, uprooting GM crop trials and similar stunts: Recently, police arrested him at his home in a midnight raid, and he spent six weeks behind bars for vandalising the fast-food joint. Chirac himself pardoned Bové for his role in destroying a GM crop in France.
Biographical Note: While Bové has posed as a peasant farmer, he's no indigenous tribesman. Born in Bordeaux, he moved with his parents to Berkeley, California where they worked as researchers. Since heading to the Larzac hills and becoming a farmer in his early 20s, he has become involved in a series of ecological and anti-globalisation campaigns, including Greenpeace.
The Israelis booted him out of the country in 2002 following his meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat: On his return to France, he accused the Israeli government and Mossad of masterminding the wave of attacks on synagogues then underway in France.
He is a member of the People's Congress of Kurdistan - an organisation which remains on the EU's list of terrorist groups - and the international peasant's group Via Campesina.
