05.06.07
It’s Sarko After All
I interrupt my ramblings on our trip to the south to quickly comment on the French election. The polls correctly predicted a Nicolas Sarkozy win, and as I type this there are riots in the Bastille area of Paris. I’m too chicken to check it out, but a couple of investigative friends of mine should be there and will no doubt give me the full story.
This reaction comes as no surprise, since there has been a lot of anti-Sarkozy sentiment approaching the first and second rounds of elections. He is a divisive figure; an excellent speaker with a stubborn approach to his opposition and some very clear ideas about economic and social changes he wants to impose on a France stuck in a rut. Today’s election – the second round – was a run-off between the more right-leaning UMP candidate and his opponent, the socialist Ségolène Royal. Either way, France was to enter a new era, where politicians would no longer belong to the World War II generation. Sarkozy – although more conservative – has not been a part of the traditional French political élite (he did not attend the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, for example), and being the son of a Hungarian immigrant, his message of “controlled” immigration is a far cry from the strictly anti-immigration message expoused by the far right.
In France, the presidential changing of the guard happens less than two weeks after the election (16 May this year), so we’ll have to quickly develop an ear for the term “President Sarkozy.” It may not be a very peaceful transition, if this graffiti is any sign of things to come:
megan said,
May 7, 2007 at 4:49 am
Yeah, I saw a poster here where someone had drawn a little mustache on him to make him look like Hitler.. This should be interesting
rachel said,
May 7, 2007 at 9:24 am
No kidding! I suppose many of the other candidates’ posters were defaced, but it seemed like the Sarkozy ones were pretty bad.