Ensemble Tout Devient Possible

The election results have been tallied and the results are in. The 6th president of the 5th Republic of France will be: (drum roll, please)---

Nicolas Sarkozy! There are a lot of people in my lab who will be disappointed. I can't really say that it's a surprise, however--he had led virtually every poll since the campaign started. 53% Sarko, 47% Sego. He takes office on May 16th--none of this "lame duck" business we have back in the 'States. Word on the street is that he will take as his Prime Minister a guy named François Fillon. Interestingly, there is yet another important election coming up in about 3 weeks: that for the Assembly National (which is kind of like Congress).

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In my French class last week,as an exercise in speaking each person was required to describe the current political situation in their country. The class is made up of people from all over the world: off the top of my head, we have representatives from the U.S., Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Sweden, South Korea, China, Thailand, Poland, and even Kazakhstan (making her the only Kazakhstanian not named Borat that I know). Anyways, one of the interesting factoids I came away with is that Poland currently has identical twin brothers (Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski) serving as its President and Primer Minister respectively.

French political vocabulary:
un sondage = a poll
le mandat = term (in France, the Presidential term is 5 years--it used to be 7, but changed a few years ago).
le scrutin = ballot
une urne = ballot box
unkept promises = les promesses non-tenues

Good luck to France. We'll see over the next few years if they made the right choice...