Election Fever is Busting Out All Over
Reporting the French elections : Sunday Noon
by Nidra Poller
IÂ’ve never seen anything like it since I came to live in Paris in 1972. Election excitement is busting out all over. Every snippet of conversation that wafts my way as I walk around on this glorious hot-as-summer day in April is about the election.
Today is the last day of a two-week spring holiday for schoolchildren. Families usually stay on vacation until the very last minute. Well, in the neighborhood I am covering, they all came home to vote. And, this being France, when friends get together to watch the election night programs, they have a feast. Long lines in all the shops, people buying food for the party.
The level of voter participation was estimated at 35% at noon. There is every expectation of an exceptionally strong turnout. For the first time French citizens in the Americas were able to vote with the same level of suspense as their compatriots here in France, because they cast their ballots yesterday instead of “tonight” French time, when the results are already announced. Their results will of course be held secret until this evening. Voter turnout in the Americas was exceptionally high.
Today’s noon interview: Waiting in line at the charcuterie I hear the person next to me speaking on his cell phone. “…to watch Ségolène Royal lose.” I ask him if there is a special menu for the occasion. And we embark on a most enlightening conversation. When I tell him that I am covering the elections for Pajamas Media, he switches to English. Very fluent English (you’ll see later why I mention this).
His predictions are just about the same as mine: Sarkozy will win by about 5 points over Royal. Bayrou will stagnate at around 18 or 19%. Politically Le Pen’s finished — old hat; he’ll probably level out at 12% or 13%.
Very acurate! I must confess I thought it was gonna be Sarko-bayrou.
My informer says that Ségolène Royal did not understand what it means to be president. “President,” etymologically, means to be seated in front of…in other words, to lead. She went through her phony exercise of “participatory democracy,” listening to people’s gripes, and churning them into a so-called political program. She didn’t understand that many people in her own party are fed up. The French are fed up. Out in the banlieue, people on welfare are earning more than hard-working salaried people. That doesn’t mean that Sarkozy is perfect. But you vote against the disastrous candidate, and take the best you can get. The old guard of the Socialist party is going to make her pay for this defeat! The hard left wing, led by [former PM] Fabius, will take over. Of course there will be a violent reaction to Sarkozy’s victory. It will begin tonight.
The gentleman is a 44 year-old professor of law at the Assas branch of the Sorbonne. And he learned English five months agoÂ…under hypnosis.
Radio J [a Jewish station] reported early this afternoon on a serious fight between Maghrebis and Jews in Belleville today. Further details in a few minutes.
Yesterday I had one of those touchstone conversations with a French friend. Aghast at the Virginia Tech massacre, she gave me the same lesson I had been hearing day in and day out in the French media: gun control! Why donÂ’t you Americans impose gun control? CanÂ’t you understand? The reference of choice here is Michael Moore. And everyone believes itÂ’s easier to buy a gun in the US than to buy a baguette on Sunday morning in Paris. My friend said they should have metal detectors at the entrance to the campus. I explained that there is no wall around an American campus. I explained that our Constitution was made to last, we donÂ’t revise it every other year like the French. I explained why I canÂ’t listen to these automatic pop-up French lessons that cover everything from a marital spat to car bombs in Iraq. ItÂ’s always the same lesson: do like us, donÂ’t do anything, donÂ’t moveÂ…and donÂ’t shoot.
These conversations can only go so far. Either the friendship ends, or the friend backs out. We left it at that and then went together to the Paris City Hall to visit an exhibition —organized by the Filles et Fils des Juifs Déportés (Sons and daughters of deported Jews)—dedicated to the 11,400 French Jewish children deported to the Nazi death camps. The dark flashing eyes of those children, the exuberant life that blossoms in their beings, the intelligence, tenderness, charm and youthful awkwardness captured in photos haunts us forever. The babies! The mothers plucked out of the hospital with their babes in arms. The children separated from their parents in the French concentration camps, deported separately, thrown into the ovens by the hundreds. Familiar faces and names…our families, our distant cousins, our landsmen.
On the way home I passed a local school. Official posters of all twelve candidates are displayed on zigzag row of panels on the sidewalk. No sooner are they put up than some are defaced. Posters of Left and far Left candidates are almost always untouched. The others are slashed, tagged, covered with insults. The vandals unwittingly reflect on their chosen candidates!
On this panel, Nicolas Sarkozy was reworked as Hitler—the thick lock of hair across the forehead, the little moustache. The authors of the profanation signed their work with a big printed sticker. They call themselves ARTRESISTANCE.
My blood boiled. What punks! What slime! So they think that’s the Résistance—a thick black magic marker and a pinhead brain? They think that’s a Nazi? Nicolas Sarkozy? And what do they think about the faces of the children whose lives were slashed, broken, and burned?
My friend went on to another rendez-vous and I continued the conversation alone in my white hot mind.
My friend, I was in the United States when our cousins were exterminated. And we had the same Constitution then as now, the same right to bear arms. Well, my friend, no one shot up the schools in those days. But here, in this country, tens thousands of Jews were taken to slaughter. Try to understand why we defend the right to bear arms. Most of us donÂ’t exercise it. But itÂ’s an eloquent statement. DonÂ’t mess with me. And French people should not be aiming easy lessons at us today. They should be asking what they are going to do about the violence looming on the horizon here and now.
Report on the incident at Belleville, as described by the Uncle of the Jewish boys. Saturday evening two religious Jewish girls came out of the synagogue after the end of Sabbath service. A group of Maghrebis accosted them. A young Jewish man, Didier, intervened to protect them. The Maghrebis turned and attacked him.
Today Didier went back with his brother, found the assailants, attempted to settle their differences peacefully. The Maghrebis immediately started beating the Jewish boys. Their uncle called the police repeatedly. It took them 10 minutes to come. The uncle regrets: IÂ’m 66, I couldnÂ’t intervene. The aggressors ran away. The police took the Jewish boys into custody. They didnÂ’t try to find the Maghrebis, says the uncle, because they donÂ’t want to set foot in that part of the neighborhood. A little later, a new wave of assailants, at least 50, appeared.
At the moment there is a standoff. The uncle says he is afraid of what will happen this evening.
He is not the only one.