08 June 2017
Another ‘Re’ Word
The Refreshing French Revolution.
by Richard Pooley
“How refreshing!” my wife said, as I switched off the radio on my phone. We had been listening to the interview of one of France’s new politicians. It’s a phrase we have been saying to each other almost every day for the past few weeks. First Emmanuel Macron and now some of the leading lights of his new party, La République en marche (REM), have been communicating with their French compatriots in a way they are not used to – openly, thoughtfully and positively. For example, they are acknowledging the difficulties that lie ahead if Macron pushes ahead, as he has made abundantly clear he will, with a wholescale reform of the Labour Law. At the same time they appear convinced that their plans are practical and achievable. And that they can persuade the usual opponents of such reform – the trades unions, students and left-wing politicians – to accept it as the best way of reducing France’s stubbornly high unemployment rate (still above 20% for people under the age of 25).
France’s equivalent of today’s UK’s parliamentary election – les législatives – has its first round on Sunday. 577 seats in the National Assembly are up for grabs. A poll published yesterday predicted that, after the second round of voting on June 18, REM would get between 385-415 seats, Les Républicains (LR – equivalent to the UK Conservative Party) 105-215, La Partie Socialiste (PS – similar to Corbyn’s Labour Party) 25-35, La France insoumise (FI – Marxist/Communist) 19-22, and the Front National (FN – far-right Nationalist) a mere 5-15. As in the UK, the two-round French voting system is not a proportional one. Less than a third of French people say they will vote for REM’s candidates and 17% are going to vote for Marine Le Pen’s FN but, just like UKIPers and Liberal Democrats in the UK, French Nationalists will be woefully under-represented in Paris. For those of you who have become dismissive of pollsters’ forecasts, there is almost no difference between the French polls. They are all predicting that President Macron is going to get the majority he needs in the National Assembly for him to lead the renouvellement of France’s economy and society.
In fact, we don’t have to rely on the pollsters to tell us what is going to happen. Those French living abroad have already taken part in the first round of voting. My wife and I, as expatriate Brits, can vote in a UK general election in the last constituency where we were registered to vote before moving abroad (Bath in our case and only for the next ten years). Around 1.3 million French expats are eligible to vote in one of eleven foreign constituencies. A fifth of them did so last weekend. The REM candidate came top in nine and their allies, Mouvement Démocrate (MoDem), headed the Central European and Balkan constituency. One has to ask how anyone can truly represent all compatriots living in such vast areas. But it must be rather fun to be able to say that you are the MP for the constituency of East Europe, Asia and Oceania, as a certain Anne Genetet will be able to do after June 18. She is the REM candidate, of course.
Of those nine future députés REM, five are women. It is probable that half of REM’s députés in the new National Assembly will be women. If so, that means around 40% of the Assembly’s députés will be female, up from the current 27%. One of them, I hope, will be Huguette Tiégna.
I live in the Orwellian-sounding 2nd Constituency of the Lot. The media tend to add “Figeac-Souillac” so that we know how far it extends. Figeac sits on the Célé river and is famous (in France at least) as being the birthplace of Jean-François Champollion, decipher of the Rosetta Stone’s hieroglyphs. Souillac is on the Dordogne river far to the west. It’s a big rural constituency which has sent a Socialist député to Paris for as long as most people can remember. Jean Launay, the PS député for the last nineteen years, switched to REM a few months ago but cannot be their candidate this time; nobody can stand for REM if they have had more than three terms in the Assembly. So, the PS candidate is the charming Vincent Labarthe. He’s obviously worked hard for local people as a mayor, regional councillor and a member of countless committees at the national and even European level. He played football and rugby until he was 36. Many of the promises he makes in his election leaflet match those of Macron and REM. He will participate actively in the “moralisation” of public life, not employ any members of his family, and focus on being a député, dispensing with most of his current official jobs. But to me and, I suspect, a lot of people between Figeac and Souillac, Monsieur Labarthe looks and sounds like the politicians of old…those who filled the last National Assembly.
REM’s candidate, Huguette Tiégna, is utterly and refreshingly different. She is 35 and black. Born and raised in Burkina Faso, she only came to France in 2009 and to Figeac 3 years ago. Among her many academic achievements is a doctorate in engineering from the University of Le Havre. When she arrived in France at the northern port, she was welcomed by the then Republicain mayor, Édouard Philippe, now France’s new Prime Minister. She is head of R & D at WhyLot, a start-up in Figeac which makes electric motors for use by renewable energy companies. She has zero political experience (the local paper described her as a virgin without putting the adjective “political” before it). When Macron was Economy Minister last year he came down for the launch of WhyLot. Tiégna fell for him: “He was interested in the company, in our products, in us and our people. He came towards us and listened.” Anyone who has seen Macron working a crowd will know what she means by that last sentence.
Will the voters of the 2nd Constituency of the Lot, Figeac-Souillac, really choose to be represented by a black woman engineer from one of their former African colonies who has only lived among them for three years? I suspect she will get through the first round on Sunday. If she wins the second round and becomes my député, I won’t be alone in being astonished. But if she does, we will know that France really is ready and eager for change. How refreshing! If only I could say the same for my own country.
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