The moderate people of France have probably been stunned by the first round of the French presidential election. Hitherto, it had been assumed that all the minor-party and independent candidates would be swept aside in the first round and that the run-off between the two leaders on May 5 would be between the mainstream centre-left socialists and the incumbent centre-right candidate President Jacque Chirac.
Instead the far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen caused an upset by taking second place from the Socialist candidate Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and earning the right to contest the second round against Mr Chirac. Mr Jospin has been Prime Minister since 1997 after the Socialists did well in parliamentary elections and he and Mr Chirac have been ruling the country together in an odd co-operative tension caused by the French political system under which the president is more than just the figurehead who nominates the person with the parliamentary majority as Prime Minister but an office with significant powers of its own.
French voters, it appears, have judged the past five years of Chirac-Jospin government harshly, despite a fair degree of evidence that Mr Jospin administered with dour competence. It was not so much his age – 64 – but the absence of any capacity to inspire. The previous Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand, was older than Mr Jospin, but he could fire the voters into enthusiasm. Perhaps Mr Jospin appears to compromise too much with the centre right to attract or keep loyalty.
Nor was it a great victory for Mr Chirac who topped the poll. He got just 19.7 per cent of the vote to Mr Jospin’s 16.1 per cent with Mr Le Pen between them on 17.0 per cent. The vote was able to fracture because there was a large field of 16 candidates. But that should not have mattered if Mr Jospin and Mr Chirac had been able to articulate to the persuade the average French voter that however appealing simplistic messages might be, they were not a panacea. So the voters went to the far right and the far left. Aside from the upsurge in support for the National Front, three Trotskyist candidates managed to take 11 per cent of the vote – votes that would otherwise go to the Socialists.
Mr Le Pen managed to exploit simple anti-globalisation messages – made stronger in the European context because the bogey is not just world forces, but also the economic and political forces of a single Europe exemplified in the Maastricht treaty. It is easy for a political leader to point to external forces as the author of local woes. Clearly, many French voters were taken in by Mr Le Pen’s blaming Maastricht and globalisation for job losses and shrinking farm incomes in France. Coupled with the other staple of far-right politics – law and order – Mr Le Pen managed to persuade enough voters to topple out Mr Jospin.
But Mr Le Pen’s rantings against immigration; his blaming of the Europe Union and globalisation for anyone’s economic woes; and his call for action against crime are no solutions for the marginalized. Indeed, his policies are likely to make many more dispossessed and marginalised.
The vote should shake the French out of their political apathy which was evidenced by the low turn-out. Those French voters who would ordinarily vote against Mr Chirac must now emerge from apathy and at least recognise that he would maintain French democratic values and not turn from those things which are more likely to deliver prosperity – engagement with the world and Europe.