The first round of the French presidential election is a national carnival that seldom disappoints. If Sunday’s vote follows the opinion polls, only President Nicolas Sarkozy with 28 per cent of the vote and his Socialist party opponent François Hollande (a predicted 27 per cent) will remain in the ring. The country will then be faced with the real choice of who is to run France for the next five years, but the elimination of the eight outsiders will have taken most of the high spirits out of the campaign.
The first round is the roll call of true believers. Three of the current candidates are Trotskyists (or ex-Trotskyists) and four have never scored more than 1.5 per cent in the opinion polls. But until the eve of the election, according to the rules, all must be granted the same level of attention and national airtime.
They include Eva Joly, who started her life in France as a Norwegian au pair and then developed into a ferocious anti-corruption examining magistrate. She is now the Green Party’s choice for president. But despite her distinctive personal career she is a political disaster. In the past the French Greens have polled above 10 per cent of the vote. This year ‘la Joly’ only made the headlines when she tripped up and gave herself a black eye, after which she changed her spectacle frames from bright red to bright green. She has not been helped by the ferocious squabbles that have broken out among her supporters. Among them are political dinosaurs such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit, once known as ‘Danny le Rouge’, leader of the 1968 Paris student insurrection. Eva Joly’s political career will be terminated if she scores the humiliating prediction of 3 per cent.
Meanwhile two rival outsiders called Poutou and Dupont-Aignan, both wearing black shirts, have added some gaiety to the national debate.
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