Sarkozy is out. In France, the return to the throne is a mission impossible. Fillon is the favorite for the Elysee Palace but the chances for Marine Le Pen increase.
Written by Ivo Christov; Originally appeared at A-specto, translated by Valentina Tzoneva exclusively for SouthFront
The results are known. Francois Fillon convincingly won the first round of primaries for presidential candidate of the right wing in France with 44.2%. Alain Zhyupe goes to the second round with 28.4%. Former President, Nicolas Sarkozy, dropped by a modest 20.7% of the vote. The outcome of the race is almost a foregone conclusion, given the appeal of Sarkozy to his supporters to support the favorite Fillon.
For the duration of six months, the pollsters were predicting a runoff between Sarkozy and Zhyupe. The cameras followed the former president at the heels, who was igniting the crowds by promising a tough line against Islamist contagion in the suburbs. “No integration but assimilation,” Sarkozy proclaimed and his words evoked applause.
“The burkas have no place in our society and we must end the racket by the small communities,” “le petit Nicolas” cut off to ecstatic audiences and the media gradually believed in his potential return. Meanwhile, the nondescript Fillon dropped the prophetic phrase: “the French are killing the kings.” Fact: in the Fifth Republic, a former president never returns to the throne of the “republican monarchy”. Once deposed off, the French leaders have no future. The media and the investigators are the new guillotine. Yesterday it cut off the head of Sarkozy. The snap-shots of a year ago of the unshaven former president exiting an investigation after many hours of interrogation compromised his hopes of returning to the Elysee Palace. Sarkozy launched into the race with his characteristic energy, capturing the public’s expectations and went on to conquer the terrain of the far right. But he forgot his neck. Until yesterday, he remained the most prominent figure on the French political scene. But politics is not just a scene.
The winner, Francois Fillon, was a mediocre actor but a meticulous administrator. In the elections, he bet on a solid right program in the spirit of Thatcher which provides redundancy in the administration, increased working hours for clerks, simplified procedure in job losses for business. Fillon promises 100 billion in savings in the budget for a period of five years, hoping to stem the debt of the French Treasury. The former Prime Minister envisages changes in the law allowing the deprivation of French nationality of persons, holding dual citizenship found guilty of terrorism. Fillon plans to build new prisons with a capacity of 16 000 seats.
In foreign policy plans, the candidate of the right wing is close to Vladimir Putin. The Russian president seems to be the big winner on the course of the presidential race in France, because it is very likely that the runoff in May will end up with his two favorites: Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen.
The breakthrough of Fillon, however, complicates the internal political intrigue in France. Unlike Sarkozy, despite his hard program, he has no charisma and strong leadership skills and can hardly be relied upon to seceede a part of the electorate of the National Front. As a devotee of austerity, it will be hard to capitalize the votes of the Socialists at a possible runoff. As a result, the chances for Marine Le Pen to enter the Elysee Palace grow. Paradoxically, the Islamists who do not hide their desire to throw France into civil turmoil, are also interested in the victory of the candidate of the National Front, which will radicalize the six-million Muslim community in France. It is therefore very likely that in the coming months before the elections in May 2017, terrorists will launch new strikes on French territory in order to escalate the political debate and move the focus from economy to identity and security, from which Fillon can only lose.
I understand it was transcribed from Russian but the name of the guy is Alain Juppé and not Zhyupe.
Great article by the way… As a side note I should add that french press and MSM is doing Juppé’s campaign.
I agree.
I am certain that Marine Le Pen will win, she’s the next one on the string…
Brexit, Trump, Marine Le pan… and Italy next
All of them because they are listening to the grass-root in the population adjust to them and who the fuck say they have to deliver, it is more of a protest against “the establishment”
And especially all these professional politicians and bureaucrats, it’s more like a movement
that doesn’t give a shit about politic, but just want a alternative instead of more of what have been done for the last 50 years and even more.
Make no mistake, Marine Le Pen winning would be the worst scenario for France as this could break into a civil war or at least into a cycle of public unrest and violence. Before being anti-EU and anti-NATO, France’s National Front is primarily an anti-Muslim party and to make things worse it has close ties to Israeli far right.
No. If majority of French citizens want to maintain a nation state (and therein lays the issue), that state is required to control its territorial integrity, ensure safety and cohesion of citizens and control and contain the presence of non citizens.
France is failing in these categories – to retain integrity of nation state (and there are many EU federalists on left and right who actually don’t want to), a correction is necessary. It won’t come from the mainstream centrist parties, left or right, they are simply too enmeshed in the political status quo, and too fearful of alienating the ethnic bloc voters, for any actual change to prioritize nation state, that will only realistically come from the harder conservatives.
That however, is not necessarily a permanent shift, rather a temporal readjustment. This notion of only ever accepting the choices offered by a two-party mainstream system is flawed – as when they offer no significant difference on raft of policies, a third option is required to instigate authentic change. The centrist left and right will simply keep offering exactly the same policies as have done for the last decade. Frankly, any country that has a domestic situation like Calais, has simply lost authority and control over its own territorial arrangements, and lacks credibility as nation state, that is, should the French actually want to retain one.
That’s Hitler’s project ! Isn’t it ?
No, that is ridiculously hyperbolic and binary political statement. The support you see on this site for Syria is about maintaining a secular nation state’s integrity – so is that too a Hitler-esque project by your logic? No? France has to decide whether it wants to be nation state or a federal EU state-let, it cannot be both in the longer term.
As aside, Hitlers broader project was in fact a singular federalized Europe under total German subordination and proxy governments.
Everyone have to be intelligent on that matter. Like your governments tried to impose the Sunni primacy in middle-east and had scores fight and die for it, there is other forces smarter than your rulers who seek to retaliate by instigating a white christian supremacist patern to make you selfdestroy.
Sarkozy is the French version of Tony Blair.
And they are ISIS because there are a tunnel between them.