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Seggy Stardust
The race for the left's nomination for France's presidential election next year is hotting up. Most of the main extreme-left parties have declared candidates, despite a challenge from anti-globalisation activist José Bové to join forces. Closer to the mainstream, Socialist Party hopeful Laurent Fabius has attacked front-runner Ségolène Royal for betraying socialist principles.
Seven Socialist Party "big beasts" have glowered with varying degrees of jealous fury as Mme Royal has captured voters' hearts - and acres of glittery press attention. Her proposal that persistent young offenders should be sent to military style "boot camps" played well with the public, but for many in her party, Fabius included, it was a blatant attempt to snatch centre-right challenger Nicolas Sarkozy's mantle as populist crime fighter. Sarkozy's supporters remark that socialists prefer to blame crime levels on society's inequalities, a stance that they say puzzles and infuriates the vast majority of law-abiding poor who are the main victims of yob violence.
Following last autumn's riots, and the infiltration of mainly peaceful marches against the CPE employment contract by muggers from the council estates, French voters tell poll after poll that they're fed up with bien-pensant excuses for rising crime. However, among Socialist Party activists if not the public at large, the old excuses persist. Even if they didn't, Royal's rivals would stir them up as a means of criticising her for lurching to the right.
Out on the fringes, however, it's business as usual. Perennial Trotskyite "Worker's Struggle" spokesperson Arlette Laguillier has, as expected, announced her candidacy for president. Arlette is 67 now, and 2007 is likely to be her last race. Her sect brought in close to six percent of the vote in 2002. Marie-George Buffet, of France's Communist Party, is also planning to run. The Communists won almost 3.5 percent of 2002's first-round vote.
As we reported last week, José Bové declared his candidacy, expressing a hope that France's far-left parties would present a unified candidacy (ie, him) to challenge the centre-left. Bové's candidacy hasn't taken off as he hoped - rival extreme-left campaigner Olivier Besancenot (see below) has accused the former peasants' league leader of cosying up to the Socialist Party. In negotiations towards a unified candidacy Besancenot reportedly asked Bové if he could have his guarantee that he wouldn't accept the Agriculture Ministry in exchange for his support of a mainstream socialist candidacy - Bové, he claims, refused to answer.
France's well-known social problems, the failure of the EU constitution, the series of scandals rocking the ruling UMP party and president Chirac and the trade union-led defeat of the CPE employment contract have put the far left on a bit of a roll. With Ségolène Royal - a suspected centrist - on the Socialist Party ticket, the left's extreme wing is expecting to gain thousands of votes from disillusioned leftists.
But will this lead to another nightmare, as in 2002 when the mainstream left candidate, prime minister Lionel Jospin, was knocked out in the first round by Le Pen? Some socialists blame the far left for "stealing" Jospin's votes, thus allowing the National Front leader to sneak into the final round. Others counter that if Jospin hadn't been so determined to pose as a centrist, voters would have stayed with socialist candidate true to his leftist roots.
It will be a difficult balance. A candidate needs to appeal to centrist voters, while preventing those further to the left from defecting. Laurent Fabius, for one, doesn't believe Royal can pull off this balancing act.
There's evidence, however, that other leftists are considering tactical voting to ensure at least one candidate from the red corner challenges in the second round. Olivier Besancenot, the youthful Paris postie who leads the Revolutionary Communist League also declared his candidacy this week. Besancenot, who won over 4 percent of the vote in 2002, is media-friendly and hugely popular among students and disgruntled youngsters. He's sure to see himself as a potential future left wing candidate, particularly if the socialists disentegrate.
He's been running into realism while out canvassing. He told the press that, while speaking to the mayors and councillors of France's regions to raise support for his bid, he's been told that they want to see a credible socialist candidate in the second round. "If Ségolène Royal is running at 30 percent in the polls, we'll give you our support," they tell Besancenot. However, if her support is down to a dicier 20 percent, they'll back Royal.
Looks like supporting the extremists is a first round luxury for France's left wing, which agrees on little apart from the need to keep Sarkozy - the likely beneficiary of a Socialist failure - out of the Elysee.
