Electioneering French Style: the Red, the Rose and the Black

I periodically like to take a ramble through the French on-line press. Lately the coverage seems to be all presidential election news all the time, which, since DSK was eliminated, can be almost as boring as the American Republican Primary campaign. Sometimes, though, an interesting item or two will pop up. Today I came across a story about candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, operating in full-throated electoral mode.

It seems that last Thursday, about 200 metal workers from a company called ArcelorMittal came to Paris to meet with the President. But instead of a welcome mat, they were greeted in front of his campaign headquarters by "an accueil musclé"-- i.e., they were blasted with tear gas. Outraged, the metal workers marched on to the Eiffel Tower, intending to post a banner identifying the tower's steel as from their own region. You'd imagine that a sensitive candidate might want to apologize for such an ugly incident. But when questioned about it by a TV journalist, Sarkozy was his typically irascible and vulgar self. He responded (this is a loose translation): "What do you want me to say-- you think I give a damn?" He followed this remark by turning on the journalist, calling him a "couillon," and then attempting to make a lame joke about it. In the French Le Huffington Post article at this link, you can see a video of the exchange. Note the astonished looks of those around the reporter.

Meanwhile today, elsewhere in Paris, there was a large, cheery march from the Place de la Nation to the Bastille in support of the Front de Gauche party and their candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

Melenchon and backers of the Front de Gauche on their way to the Bastille/photo Bastien Hugues sur Twitter

The crowd-- estimated at about 100,000-- carried various quotable banners. The one I liked best: "Mettez à la mode la couleur rouge!" I suppose Mélenchon has as much chance of becoming President of France as Ron Paul has of winning the Republican nod. But Mélenchon's campaign has lately been gaining a surprising amount of enthusiasm. If he gets the approximately 10 per cent of the vote that pollsters consider likely, he could make a serious dent in the turnout for the Socialist party candidate, François Hollande. Consequently, there's been a bit of snarky chatter in the media about the purposes of the Front de Gauche campaign. Cynics ask: Is Mélenchon, a radical leftist, actually a "coqueluche" of the arch-conservative Sarkozy?