The french presidential elections are over and the winners are the french people. As the french newspaper Libération wrote this morning, "Jacques Chirac [was] reelected by the Republic."
This is very true. In fact, more people from the left political parties, who are natural opponents to the conservative president, voted for him than electors from the right and liberal democratic parties.
Let's briefly look at the numbers.
On April 21, 71% of the potential voters actually voted. Jacques Chirac won slightly less than 20 percent (or about 14 percent of the people who have a right to vote). The extreme-right gathered about 17 percent of the voters, or 12 percent of the french people able to vote.
Yesterday, 80% of the potential voters used their bulletin to express their view. 82% of these votes favoured Jacques Chirac, which means he represents about 66 percent of all french people. The antidemocratic Front National had less than 18 percent of the votes, or about 14 percent of the french people able to vote.
A few more comments:
- one person over seven has casted his vote for a fascist and xenophobic "leader": it's still way too much; we -- the people -- need to work more to reduce this percentage.
- yesterday was not a presidential election, but a referendum for democratic values: Jacques Chirac was not elected for his ideas or his program.
- even if Jacques Chirac is tempted to claim that his "victory" belongs to him and his ideas, I hope he will not do it; many of his democratic political opponents voted for him because it was better to vote for a "crook" than for a fascist; and the number of his opponents on April 21 who voted for him yesterday exceeded the number of his allies.
Now, french people will have to really choose who will govern them in the next parliamentary elections, on June 9 and 16.
In the mean time, I'll come back to technology stories.
Sources: Keith B. Richburg, The Washington Post, May 6, 2002; The New York Times; Libération
3:20:04 PM
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