Le Pen is back!

Jean-Marie Le Pen, France's ultra-right perennial presidential candidate, managed to obtain the required 500 signatures from local elected officials before March 14, the deadline for presidential hopefuls. He shocked everyone last time around, coming in second on April 21, 2002, sidelining socialist Lionel Jospin, and guaranteeing a massive victory for Jacques Chirac in the second round. This unhappy (for the socialists) memory explains his difficulty in qualifying for the ballot this year. The names of local officials signing candidates' petitions are now public, and neither Socialist nor UMP officials were eager to give him their blessing.

On March 8, with Le Pen still 67 signatures short, Nicolas Sarkozy declared on the public television channel France 3 that he would “fight to allow Le Pen and Besancenot [a Communist leader] to defend their opinions” by running for president. This magnanimous call was approved by 72 percent of the French public. Nevertheless, Sarkozy was the target of a subtle critique from Chirac in his farewell speech on Sunday March 11: "Never compromise with extremism," he urged the French people. On March 13, Le Monde charged that Sarkozy supports Le Pen’s participation in the election because he has his sights set on Le Pen’s votes in the second round.

Gay marriage definitely banned in France

In another defeat for the French left, on Tuesday, France’s highest court annulled the union of two men. The marriage was consecrated on June 5, 2004, in Bègles, Gironde, by Mayor Noël Mamère. The mustachioed politician from the French Green party declared he was not surprised at all by the judges’ decision but regretted that “the high court had missed an occasion to make law fit society.” The newlyweds and their attorney, Caroline Mécari, are going to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. But, as the high court said: "Under French law, marriage is a union between a man and a woman,” so it is unlikely Stephane Charpin and Bertrand Charpentier will be allowed to remarry.

The disappointed couple

A Ministry of Immigration and National Identity?

On Thursday March 8, Nicolas Sarkozy proposed the creation of a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity during an appearance on the public television channel France 2. The idea produced a huge wave of protest from the French intelligentsia. The leading left-wing daily in France, Libération, compared this to the Vichy regime’s anti-Jewish laws during World War II, in an article entitled “a Ministry of the Race?”

Among politicians, reactions were prompt and unanimously sharp: François Bayrou, the UDF presidential hopeful, said that “a boundary had been crossed,” Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal called the proposal “rather ignoble” and François Hollande, her husband and chairman of the French Socialist party, added that it was “an outright flirtation with National Front doctrine.” Arnaud Montebourg, the Socialist party spokesman accused Sarkozy of "malice" in "creating a confusion between French identity and immigration.”

The MRAP, an anti-racist association, estimated that such a Ministry would “threaten national cohesion.” According to MRAP spokesman Mouloud Anouit, it constitutes a “real provocation" and sends a "xenophobic" signal. But isn’t French national cohesion more threatened when traditional political parties are out of touch with voters on matters of widespread social concern?

Indeed, in this very case, 55 percent of French people support Sarkozy’s idea for the creation of a Ministry of Immigration and National Identity, with higher ratings among the lower socioeconomic classes. Montebourg, the Socialist spokesman, prefers to imagine that the workers, 56 percent of whom favor Sarkozy’s proposal, are suffering from false consciousness and are “unfortunately not able to understand the essence of this project.” This contempt towards the workers’ opinions may be the reason for the deep unpopularity of the Socialist party among its traditional constituents.