A French Political Primer

There's been a lot of political interest in France currently with their upcoming presidental elections in April 2007. And although the political system has distinct differences with our U.S. system (e.g., in France there is a bewildering array of alliances and coalitions which are necessary to establish a long-term government), as best as I can tell the decision as to who gets to be president usually comes down to two distinct candidates, much the same as our "two-party" Democrat-Republican system.

So: the two main parties--one from the right (the "UMP", currently in power with Jacques Chirac serving the 2nd of two terms as Prez) and one from the left (the Socialists being the main party) are in the process of officially determining who the main candidates will be--a process which is similar in a sense to the primary elections in the U.S., in which only party members are allowed to participate. Although these elections have yet to take place, I can already tell you with fair certainty that the race will come down to two candidates: Nicolas Sarkozy (on the right) and Segolene Royal (on the left).

Sarkozy is currently the Minister of the Interior as part of the Chirac government. He is the son of Hungarian immigrants and has recently returned from a trip to the United States to meet with George Bush, a move which was widely publicized here in France and indicated generally pro-American stance. As in the United States, the political parties on the right tend to be supported primarily by business and corporations.

If elected, Royal would be the 1st female president in French history; she is currently president of the region Poitu-Charentes and is partners with Francois Hollande, another prominent politician in the Socialist Party (I say "partners" because they are not in fact married...they have four children together and are bound together by the "PACS", kind of like the "civil union" of France). Interestingly, the French have only had one president from the left, Francois Mitterand in the 80s; all the others have been from the right. And in general, universities and the "intellectual elite" are more likely to support the more liberal left, although it seems to me that there is often a division of opinion within the left which sometimes prevents them from acting as a unified party.

A recent scary development in the whole French political system has been the rise to power of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a political leader on the far right whose ideas have found favor with those seeking to blame immigration, especially from Northern Africa, on the financial woes of the French economy. In fact, in 2002 Le Pen's political party received slightly more votes than the left party, nearly 17%! Hopefully 2007 will not continue this disturbing trend.