Man of the moment

Now that the results of the French presidential election have been officially confirmed, we know that the next inhabitant of the Elysée Palace will be Nicolas Sarkozy. While Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate, has gracefully accepted defeat, significant sections of the population have hardly been so pacific. In the two nights following the results, more than 200 cars were burnt by anti-Sarkozy demonstrators in many parts of the country, including prosperous towns like Lyon, which were not actively involved in the 2005 upheavals.

Sarkozy has pulled off quite a coup. The French president, under the Fifth Republic’s constitution, wields enormous power and can run the country like a virtual monarch. Sarkozy is the first president of immigrant origin; he is also part Jewish, although he does not go out of his way to project this fact. Only a few days into assuming office, he has a lot to ponder. The mandate that his citizens have given him is hardly a consensual one and there are already doubts about the powers Sarko (as the French press universally call him) will have at his disposal as president.

There is clear indication that the elderly and the rural population backed Sarkozy, while the young and the urban areas voted for Royal. There is also a distinct geographical divide in the poll preferences — south and south-western France, along with Brittany and some departments in the centre, gave a large majority to Royal, while the rest of the country chose Sarkozy. Alsace , always influenced by German racism,continued to be impressed by the anti-immigrant stance of the new president, while the highly prosperous Savoie and Haute-Savoie regions also cast their lot with the Right.

Paris and the Île-de-France region, the richest in the country, sprang a surprise, with a much-higher-than-expected support for Royal. Normally, this is a bastion of the Right, but Royal garnered as much as 49.8 per cent of the votes here, actually obtaining a majority in 11 arrondissements (districts) out of a total of 20.

Where the Socialist candidate really stumbled was in mobilizing the female vote. Preliminary data shows that she was decisively outgunned by Sarkozy there. This might look surprising to feminists, but some observers have surmised that Royal’s looks, charm and poise actually turned off women, who felt insecure in the presence of these attributes.

There have been other disquieting features in this poll. The first concerns the role of the big business houses and their allied press and media organizations. Newspapers like Le Figaro have never disguised their rightist sympathies, but some television channels and opinion-survey companies have never worn their hearts on their sleeves so blatantly as in this election. Poor Ségo never had a ghost of a chance with this lot.

The second and the most disquieting factor was the role played by INSEE, the government statistical department. Now, INSEE periodically releases broad macro-economic data for the country and the figure most analysts look at very closely is the unemployment rate. Just before the first round of polling, INSEE released unemployment figures that showed a clear decline. Obviously, Sarkozy and company were able to take advantage of these good tidings.

However, many economists and statisticians were horrified by the INSEE’s methodology and the errors in the calculations. They signed a public petition questioning the validity of the data and asking the public to be vigilant about the accuracy of the figures. However, as happens in India too (and more frequently), data and figures doctored by the ruling party and the babus always receive much higher coverage than any criticism of their accuracy, irrespective of the credentials of the critics.

Sarkozy also received indirect support from industrial groups like Peugeot-Citroën which delayed announcements of job-cuts in their factories until after the elections. Clearly, Sarkozy’s friends in the corporate board-rooms went out of their way to make his presidential path easier.

What are the options open to Sarkozy and how will France react to his initiatives ? To tackle these questions, one necessarily has to look at the man’s psyche and his vote-bank compulsions. With a firm electoral base of geriatrics and big business lobbies, Sarkozy may be tempted to adopt the much-touted line of an Anglo-Saxon market-driven economic system. There is also a strong anti-immigrant (read racist) lobby that has always favoured people like Sarkozy.

This is what worries people all over the world. There is a clear historical tradition of a colour-blind France, a nation that has always welcomed political victims from dictatorial regimes and the poor and deprived from economically-depressed regimes. The country’s social security net has generously provided for medical benefits, education, health care and public infrastructure.

Let us first look at the contentious area of racism. Sarkozy is on quicksand here. His Hungarian-Central European worldview is more visible on this subject rather than any liberal-Jewish thought process. His performance during the 2005 crisis was lamentable; his use of the term “racaille”, or “rabble” to describe the inhabitants of the “banlieues” (suburbs), where the worst violence took place, was bad enough. Worse was his threat to “hose away” the so-called miscreants. Naturally, this put paid to any hopes he might have had of winning the hearts of the non-white voters in France. He was so unpopular in these regions that he gave all of them a wide berth during the campaign.

The Sarkozy think-tank manifestly did not heed what people like Lilian Thuram had been saying. In an interview in March 2006, the French football player and an icon to the country’s youth deplored the closet racism of people like Sarkozy and his advisors and supporters like Alain Finkielkraut. He also felt sad that “France was Americanizing herself in a negative manner, with ghettoes forming everywhere, with the rich and the poor on different sides”.

On the economic front, it seems that Sarkozy will have even more of an uphill task. The French will not take kindly to their beloved socio-economic system being dismantled or changed drastically. Most Frenchmen feel that adopting the Anglo-Saxon model would demolish everything France stands for. It would make France an unjust, un-French country. More particularly, the so-called internet generation (18-to 25 years) who voted 58 per cent for Royal, will not tolerate the dilution of the Republican dream.

It is only the business elites in France who are like their cousins across the channel. A perceptive study last year disclosed that the British and the French elites exhibit an exceptional ability to perpetuate themselves. They also share the same propensity for grubby fingers that elites have all over the world. Sarkozy shows some of these unsavoury characteristics — the scandal over his house in Neuilly, the most prosperous part of Paris (and possibly Europe) just does not seem to go away. However, governance is another thing altogether. Sarkozy is happy to use the private jets and yachts of his business supporters, but he will not be able to override republican values and 200 years of history.