Sarkozy is the new French President
The exit polls in France are clearly pointing towards a Sarkozy victory and by a clear margin. France has clearly voted for change and by voting for Sarkozy it will certainly get a President who wants to implement change and regonises the need to change. Whether he succeeds remains to be seen, France as a country has been resistant in the past to change and attempts have foundered. However, the record of Sarkozy is of someone who's not afraid to be confrontational, time will tell whether he succeeds but interesting times lie ahead for France.
posted by Martin Whelton at 6:55 pm
1 Comments:
For the last five years, the government has ruled like a club class technocracy turning the French society into a low cost democracy. What we need is to champion the vision of the French Republic - “liberté, égalité, fraternité” - and vote out in the parliamentary elections the reactionary vision pervaded the narrative of a populist right, flanked by the extreme right.
More than the policies they proposed, what they all offered are competing visions of how we will be able to live in society. While Ségolène Royal’s vision starts from what we share with others in terms of how we live our daily lives, Sarkozy started from what sets us apart from each other – those who can work and those who can’t, those who are genetically predisposed and those who aren’t, the so-called “fat cats” and the so-called “scum”.
The more the right try to divide, the more fear and insecurity will be the overarching feature of the social landscape. We will campaign to prevent a clash of identities and a tipping point from a consensus of mutual respect to an instinct of fear, embodied by the succession of riots.
We need to embody the values of our citizens, reflect their aspirations and respond to their needs. What better way to do that than to involve them in the design of a better society. We need to continue providing the citizens to provide an injection of fresh and creative thinking into the burning issues that the French society faces. We now need to draw together all social democrats to discuss these issues in a constructive and collaborative way – epitomised by the debate with the centrists.
Sarkozy managed to build a strong coalition from the republican right to the extreme right based on clear and coherent values.
Segolene Royal transformed the Socialist Party, achieving the highest ever first round score and gaining the support from the centrists in the second round.
The right and extreme right are unfortunately more popular than the left and the centre. It will be up to us to demonstrate that European social democracy can build a better society than populist neoconservativism, in France...and England!
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