French Politics

I'm surprised that France has single-seat constituencies. I thought most countries in Europe had a system where a given number of representatives get elected from each region. (Actually I thought the UK was the only country in Europe that still had a single-representative-per-district system.)

Has anybody done a study of how the French Parliament would look if their elections weren't set up to favour a two-party situation?

Part of the reluctance in changing the system stems from the fact that it would create a fragmented parliament (like what happened in 1986, where they added some proportional representation to the electoral system), leading to an unstable government. This was what happened during the Fourth Republic (1946-1958), where some governments lasted literally no more than a few days before being overthrown.

Not that I think that the two-parties system is that great either.

10 Hours of Walking in Paris as a Jew — It was not without incident.

Just read the article. As I thought, he made it obvious he was Jewish (because unlike being Black or Arab, it's not something that is readily apparent). There is also the matter of editing raised in the article.

That's nice of him. I apologize on behalf of anti-semitic amalgamationist pricks. Shame on them.

President of Crif: "all violent acts today are committed by young Muslims"

Also, apparently he#s a fan of Marine Le Pen

What an idiot.

And an asshole.

Unmasking the Mafia of the French Riviera

France's National Front (FN) party has suspended founder Jean-Marie Le Pen over a series of inflammatory remarks and a feud with his daughter Marine.

"Marine, ma divine..."

He's a principled man, Le Pen, he will never compromise on being racist in public.

All part of Marine Le Pen's efforts to make the Front National a more respectable party by distancing herself from the controversial outbursts her father was known for, while not changing much to the line of the party itself.

That's pretty much what I thought this was.

Make the FN seem less of a toxic option, as they have a decent chance of gaining more seats the next sets of elections by giving right wing/nationalist voters another option, from what I remember reading elsewhere.

There's even some conspiracy theory of old Jean-Marie being in cahoots with this.

That would not be too surprising. They have been making the headlines for the past days thanks to that, after all.

There's even some conspiracy theory of old Jean-Marie being in cahoots with this.

I could see that conspiracy being true.

That, and while everybody concentrates on the drama, we don't pay much attention to some investigations being conducted about the way the FN finances its activities (hint : it looks pretty shady).

Back in the day it was the left funding them as a way to split the right vote.

Oooh but there is a thread about French politics.

So, a quick summary of the current situation for those who are interested. Before you ask, yes I lean on the left side, it will probably be easy to spot if you read the summary, but at least you are warned.

• The next big election is the regional one, with the 12 new regions (instead of 22 before). The far-right party Front National can hope to win two of them, not the less significant. Polls say the other 10 should be split with 7 for Les Républicains (LR, ex-UMP, right-wing) and 3 for the Socialist Party (PS, left-wing).
• The Front National (FN) is having great polls, but is living a family feud between former leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter and current leader Marine. The most recent news was that Jean-Marie would file a complaint to force the party to reintegrate him (he has been expelled, but he claims it was not legal). There have also been accusations of illegal financing, this time aiming at Marine's entourage - her only answer, as usual for crypto-fascist parties, was that it was a conspiracy of the government who is afraid of her. The party is under investigation. She refused to meet the judges. She also refused to be part of France's biggest TV political show yesterday because she would have been forced to talk about regional topics (which she sucks at, since she knows nothing of the region she is a candidate in - the North. And yet she will probably win. Winter is coming).
• LR, meanwhile, is split betweent the candidates to the regional elections, who are obviously focusing on that, and the leaders of the party, who are getting ready for the primaries of the party that will determine who the candidate is for the 2017 Presidential elections - it will take place in one year, give or take. The four horsemen are Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the party and former French President, who as you see is not a vain person at all (right of the party), Alain Juppé, the oldest and, in my opinion, smartest of the bunch (left of the party), Bruno Le Maire, the young promising guy (left of the party) and François Fillon, center-right of the party. Juppé and Sarkozy are first in the very early polls, but there are several unknowns: one of them is how much support they will gain within the party, which is absolutely paramount if you hope to rule (France is very feudal in that regard, you need lieges to be a great Lord), and the other one is "will Sarkozy still be free when election time will come, or will he be in a trial?" Sadly, I think he is slippery enough to delay investigations until after he is elected (and obviously, if he is elected, to, hem, "politely ask" that they stop altogether, Berlusconi-style).
• The other big recent affair for LR was around Nadine Morano, a former Sarkozy fangirl (I am not exaggerating, she was a yes-woman of the highest order). She was supposed to be the candidate in the East for the regional elections, but got fired by LR because of comments she made on France being a "white race country". Since she refused to apologize or withdraw her comments (whom even Marine Le Pen did not dare to say in her speeches - that's saying something), she lost the position, and there seems to be a lot of internal drama between Sarkozy and her now.
• Nothing to see in the center. Move along. The most prominent figure, François Bayrou, Mayor of Pau (Southwest of France), supports Alain Juppé's candidacy.
• On the left, the PS is getting ready to lose yet another election, something they are kinda used to by now I guess. There are issues with the candidate for Brittany, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who is the local top dog, but who is also the current defense minister. Since a law was (FINALLY !!!) passed to make it impossible to hold more than one elective mandat at once (before that, you could be deputy, mayor and minister at once if you managed to win the proper elections), he will resign if he wins (which is possible, because Brittany is a left-wing stronghold, and because he is kind of the local Don as I said). There was some fun too because the candidate in the Northern region was such an unknown guy he didn't even have a wikipedia page - and when they tried to create it, it was deleted for "not being relevant enough". It is obvious that no one wanted to get slaughtered by Le Pen, so they probably decided who would run in a dice game or something.
• On government matters, nothing new of significance: this time, right now, the lawyers are having a strike because of a reform. Soon they will be replaced by someone else, as it has been the case for threI e years now. There is an interesting ego fight between President Hollande, young wolf PM Manuel Valls, and younger wolf Economics Minister Emmanuel Macron, but I couldn't find an english article to detail it. IF I do I will post it. Oh, before the lawyers, the big social affair was Air France, with a reunion ending with two higher-ups getting their clothes torn apart by syndicalists. You probably saw the pictures already.
• On the left of the PS, the Ecological party is currently imploding, with almost all of its deputies leaving the ship after it was decided by the higher-ups that they would ally with the Front de Gauche (far left) instead of the PS for the regional elections (thus losing any chance to win, basically). Not much else to say about them.

And that's all I can think of right now.

I can't get over the fact that they renamed themselves Les Républicains. Like, who in their right mind thinks the GOP are cool?

Main issue is bolded.

It's exactly the same move Jacques Chirac pulled before the 2002 election, changing the name of the party from RPR to UMP. When you start having too many investigations that the media call "the whatever of the UMP", it is apparently a bad sign. Sarkozy is the one that mainly pushed for the change, for obvious reasons (the other don't have quite as many judges to run away from, if any).

edited 23rd Oct '15 12:23:49 PM by Julep

Also, these days the PS is more center-right than left. When someone dared to bring that fact to attention, they fired him and moved even further rightwards. The only Left left in France is the Front de Gauche.

At one point I wondered if the PS would end up being renamed as Les Démocrates.

Heard on Deutsche Welle radio that Front Nationale is in trouble for comparing the immigrant issues to the Nazi German occupation of France. Anyone got news links to it?

edited 23rd Oct '15 1:45:03 PM by HallowHawk