VRic, >Sorry if I sound serious, but we in France just had a very bad surprise, >as the FN (nationalist and xenophobic party) just passed the first turn of >the presidential election (we elect our presidents ourselves, in 2 turns, >with only 2 candidates in the 2nd), because of many concurring >circumstances (the media had been pretending for monthes that the results >were obvious, which led to 30% of the people not bothering to vote before >the 2nd turn, which had nether happened, whereas the 16 candidates >represented more distinct political tendancies than ever; most main >candidates based their campaign on fear, which was advertisement for the >FN; and, that's the connection with the above, the FN candidate pretended >until the end that he wasn't sure he could get enough mayors' signatures >to present his party because of a conspiracy, which was obviously false >--each candidate has to provide 500 signatures of supporting mayors, to >prevent total bonkers from showing up)...
What is really scary isn't that a kook spouts dangerous fascist nonsense (they exist everywhere), but that he obtained 16.8% of the national vote in this first round of the presidential elections! That is a lot of people subscribing to his "solutions". It should make the traditional political parties sit down and rethink their programmes. They obviously made mistakes and perhaps the worst was not listening to the electorate and what it is really concerned about. Both the moderate left (Jospin) and the moderate right (Chirac) were too complacent and ran totally boring campaigns, spouting much the same old stuff and sounding remarkably similar. And just took for granted - as did the media - that they would be in the runoff. French voters are also to blame. Yes, the election was held during school holidays so a lot of families were out of town on vacation and so couldn't/didn't bother to go home to vote. Bad timing for such an important election. And yes, comforted by their certainty that the runoff would be between Jospin and Chirac some voters took the opportunity to vote more extreme candidates as a sort of protest message to the main parties. But still. In a democracy voting isn't a recreation - it is a civic duty. We have now seen the result of generalized apathy and complacency. This holds true as much for the US (with it's generally lower voter turnouts) as for France in the present crisis. The old saying about a population/country getting the government it deserves isn't completely without merit. If you don't exercise your democratic right and duty to participate in choice you certainly have no right to complain later. Cheers, Nina Paris, France ps. Apologies, listmembers, for prolonging the OT thread. ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
