A recent post of mine told the story of the late Gaston Defferre (1910-1986). Defferre was the PS mayor of Marseille from 1944-1945 and again from 1953 until his death in 1986. He was responsible for creating a party machine and turning a blind eye to political corruption and organised crime. I’d said then that if you could compare Marseille before Defferre and after, you’d be astonished and upset to…
The former mayor of Nantes, now Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault has named a provisional list of ministers. All are now required to run for office in June’s parliamentary elections. Should they lose, they will also lose their ministry appointments. That said, it seems as if the people on the list were chosen with care as likely winners. Ayrault has named 34 ministers in total, 17 men and 17 women. Jeannette…
It is possible that François Hollande’s first 36 hours in office will stay in the collective French memory bank for some time to come. First, not only was May 15, 2012 unseasonably cool, but it also rained all day in Paris, giving Hollande reason for a few changes of clothes between engagements. He was soaked by the time he reached the Arc de Triomphe that morning (photo). Before that, he…
Today, May 15, 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy made his final handover to French president François Hollande. RMC and BFMTV reporters at the Elysée Palace said there was a definite chill in the air. They weren’t talking about the parky temperatures, either. Hollande violated protocol by turning his back on Sarkozy and his wife Carla, not even waiting until they got in the car to be driven to their Paris home. In…
The strategy of Olivier Ferrand and his Terra Nova think tank helped François Hollande to the French presidency. Ferrand says that the PS strategy was ‘in reaction’ to ‘Sarkozyisme‘. Of course, they had help from the left-wing press which had for many years — even before 2007 — criticised Nicolas Sarkozy non-stop. Everything about him was up for demonisation: his watches, his jogging, his links with Neuilly-sur-Seine, his choice of…
Pierre Haski’s article in CiF on the French elections contains this little gem: But Le Pen’s success is also, as Hollande suggested in his first speech on Sunday night, the responsibility of Nicolas Sarkozy who played with fire in his attempts to bring back Front National voters to his side. He encroached shamelessly on their ground, stoking up fears of immigration and Islam. One of his top aides – Claude…
Yesterday, in a final run-up report to France’s presidential elections, RMC host Eric Brunet said that unions were holding the ‘workers’ day’ hostage. He quoted General De Gaulle’s statement from May 1, 1950, in which he said that the day should be for all workers, not just union members. 61% of Brunet’s listeners agreed with De Gaulle. Nicolas Sarkozy held his own march yesterday in support of ‘real work’. Brunet…
The fallout of the first round of the French elections rumbles on. This is a good illustration of what happens when a fringe party has the ‘power’ to help determine the outcome of a presidential election. Nicolas Sarkozy says he is ‘no one’s hostage’ — referring to Marine Le Pen and centrist François Bayrou. However, he will need some of Le Pen’s 17.9% and Bayrou’s 10% share of the votes…
Marine Le Pen emerged as the kingmaker of the first round of France’s presidential elections on Sunday, April 22. She will announce which candidate she favours on May 1, although it is unlikely to be Nicolas Sarkozy. Alternatively, she could advise abstention. It was interesting to note that over the past several months, the left-leaning media darlings in France had insisted that insecurity and immigration were low on the list…
The first round of the 2012 French presidential elections will be held on Sunday, April 22. Just as Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP) has Marine Le Pen (FN) chipping away at his votes, so François Hollande (PS) has the Front de Gauche’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This is the first presidential contest in many years where a Communist candidate has not run. Although Mélenchon is not a Communist, his Front de Gauche party includes PCF…
Some will say, as his leftwing opponent Jean-Luc Mélenchon did in November 2011, that François Hollande reminds them of a ‘pedalo captain in a storm‘. I’m not so sure. The former longtime First Secretary of the French Socialist Party (PS) and President of the General Council of Corrèze (part of the Limousin region) has had a highly successful political career spanning three decades. Even his defeats turn into victories. A…
On Sunday, April 22, the first round of the 2012 presidential elections will take place in France and its overseas territories. Two spoiler candidates have emerged to Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande: Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Front de Gauche) and Marine Le Pen (Front National). Polls show them to be relatively close — between 13% and 17% — with Mélenchon edging Le Pen. A number of French voters are still undecided. Many…
The stitch-up fiscal union proposed by Merkozy (cf. Élysée Treaty) is merely a relaunch of the existing Stability and Growth Pact but this time with the teeth and claws necessary to force compliance by defaulters like France weak economies like Greece, nations coerced or conned into the Euro by Franco-Germany and their pals in the Euroclub of gravy-train-riding elites, against the interests of the peoples of Europe’s nations. Whether F.U. goes through…
At the end of May, I wrote a few posts at my place about French Socialists in light of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) sex scandal. One of the posts included a profile of the think tank Terra Nova, which was poised to help DSK with his expected run in the Socialist primary for the 2012 presidential elections. As we know, events in New York put paid to that. However, Terra…
Who would marry a terrorist? A leftist French lawyer, apparently. Isabelle Coutant-Peyre married Ilich Ramírez Sánchez — aka ‘Carlos’ — in 2001. She has also served as his lawyer. On October 26, the Daily Mail reported: Carlos the Jackal’s health is deteriorating after he went on hunger strike over his treatment in France’s most notorious prison. The 62-year-old Venezuelan terrorist, whose murderous exploits shocked the world in the 70s and…
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