Thousands protest French rightist’s gain
April 23, 2002 - The Boston Globe
PARIS - Many French shook their heads in bewilderment and shame yesterday as they tried to understand how a right-wing extremist lifted himself from the political fringe into a runoff next month for the country’s highest office.
Many of the same residents immediately threw their support behind the incumbent, President Jacques Chirac, to prevent Jean-Marie Le Pen from winning the May 5 runoff. Le Pen, who founded the Front National in 1972 and is known for his anti-immigrant platform, stunned the country by placing second - one point behind Chirac - in Sunday’s first-round balloting.
“I’m living one of the darkest pages in French history,” said Yves Bernanos, a documentary film director at La Bastille.
Within hours of Sunday’s results, people took to the streets. Tens of thousands of marchers descended on Place de la Republique and La Bastille. Many carried signs saying, “I’m ashamed to be French” or “My country is racist.”
Although Le Pen’s victory over socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin for the second spot in the runoff left scores stunned, there was also a nagging sense that apathy and a record-low voter turnout figured in Sunday’s outcome.
Chirac pulled in 19.88 percent of the vote, Le Pen 16.8 percent, and Jospin 16.18 percent, according to official results released yesterday.
Leaders of most of France’s main political parties rushed to endorse Chirac’s candidacy and block any momentum Le Pen may have generated for his nationalist party in the first-round surprise. Even members of France’s left, without its own candidate for the runoff, chose to back the conservative Chirac.
“It is the honor of our country that is at stake,” said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former finance minister and spokeswoman for Jospin, explaining why he would support the incumbent.
Le Pen, who once referred to Holocaust gas chambers as “a detail in history,” described himself yesterday as “the candidate of the French people against the candidate of the system” and pledged to pull France out of the European Union if he wins. “This push, this constant foreign immigration will - if a barrier is not erected - eventually submerge our country, making it disappear, which, of course, we cannot accept.”
Le Pen’s party has often been linked with fascism, xenophobia, and Nazism. Le Pen once shoved and yelled at socialist candidate Annette Peulvast-Bergeal at a 1995 legislative election event.
US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said “the French electorate will make its choice. We’ll leave it to them.”
Since the beginning of the lackluster campaign, there was little doubt that the runoff would be between Chirac and Jospin, with polls showing the two even. Both men - who made similar pledges to stem rising crime, cut taxes, and reduce unemployment - were predicted to receive around 20 percent of the primary vote.
But a string of events unraveled the vote and now threaten the French political system. A total of 16 candidates - most from the left - were on the first-round ballot. And voter apathy led to a record-high 28 percent.
Le Pen, who typically attracts support from the right-wing fringe, saw a modest rise in his numbers, perhaps as protest votes against the Chirac-Jospin runoff that was widely expected. Polls predict Chirac will crush Le Pen in the runoff. Still, that wasn’t enough to blunt the shock waves reverberating through France.
“Our national cohesion has been put into question,” Chirac, worried about Le Pen’s new political muscle, said sternly in his acceptance speech.
Although leftists hope to recover some of their political clout in parliamentary elections in June, there was still a sense among supporters that Sunday’s defeat could have been prevented.
“We’re here to get the left together and show that we’re angry about the way the elections turned out,” said M’Line Canjona, a student at one of yesterday’s demonstrations.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
