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Two Tribes
Much like Parisians
What do the loincloth-wearing tribesmen of French Guyana have in common with the Hèrmes-clad denizens of Paris?
Very little, one would imagine, beyond a taste for small animals (the rainforest-dwellers cook and eat them: Parisiens carry them in their handbags and encourage them to defecate on the pavements of their city).
Well, there's rather more to it than that: Both tribes were central to the French government's attempts to swing the vote in Sunday's Constitutional referendum.
The excellent Transatlantic Intelligencer has a scoop on the contribution of the Wayampi tribes to Sunday's vote: They weighed in with a 95 percent yes vote, which goes to show that the yes lobby was right to make certain those voting slips made their way into the jungle.
Meanwhile, in Paris and Lyon, where the yes vote was expected to be significantly higher than the national average, polling booths remained open for a full two hours later than those in the rest of France. Transatlantic Intelligencer calculates that "this little subterfuge" brought in an extra 20,000 votes for the yes camp.
