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Un Nouveau Jour? Peut-être.

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

And now, for a gigantic quasi-post-mortem on the French Presidential elections.

Read on . . .

Firstly, let us note the expression of tolerance and respect for democracy in France.

Next, let's break down the vote. One of the most celebrated features of Ségolène Royal's candidacy was her gender, with the Socialist candidate telling anyone and everyone who would listen just how momentous it would be if France elected its first female President.

Unfortunately for Royal, that message did not take. Indeed, French women were at the forefront in rejecting it:

Socialist Segolene Royal failed to win over a majority of women voters in France's presidential election and may have paid a price for focusing too much on her gender at the expense of promoting her policies.

Only 48 percent of women voted for Royal, according to an Ipsos poll conducted on election day on Sunday, while 52 percent supported rightist rival and overall winner Nicolas Sarkozy.

The weak female support is a bitter personal blow for Royal, who had played up her feminist credentials throughout the campaign, frequently defending policies she would want "as a mother" and accusing critics of male chauvinism.

Some women said the glamorous Royal, a mother of four, had focused too much on the symbolism linked to becoming France's first female president.

"The reason she did not have the female vote is not because there was no solidarity but because she was not up to it," said Tita Zeitoun, founder of the Action de Femme group which fights to get more women into top business positions.

"Just because you're a feminist, you don't vote for a women who does not have the ability. We're talking about the presidential election here ... It's too serious to link this to a phenomenon of femininity or feminism," she said.

That's a healthy attitude. Putting aside Royal's specific ideological leanings, voters would have been more disposed to electing her had she shown the competence, command and grasp of the issues that, say, Margaret Thatcher demonstrated. Instead, Royal was . . . er . . . less than impressive on the campaign trail:

According to Marie-France Etchegoin, a commentator in the Nouvel Observateur, Royal went from "conquering supermum" who had raised four children and held down a remarkable career to an incompetent and vacuous "Emma Bovary of politics".

Royal's inability to rally women to her banner was not the only failure. One of her allies was temporarily suspended from the team for identifying François Hollande, the Socialist party's secretary-general and father of her children, as her "biggest defect". For a while he had given the impression of believing he, not she, was the candidate, apparently bitter about seeing his own presidential ambitions trampled on by his common-law spouse of the past three decades.

He repeatedly contradicted her, on one occasion even announcing tax rises, to the horror of the candidate, in the event of a Socialist victory.

Sarkozy also swooped on Hollande as the weakest Royal link in his debate with her on Wednesday when he reminded more than 20m television viewers that the partner of the Socialist candidate had once said: "I don't like the rich."

Other "elephants", as the Socialist party's leaders are known, were no more helpful, voicing support for their champion with the sort of enthusiasm that evoked vultures circling their prey in the desert.

She was dogged from the beginning by questions of competence, often complaining: "A man would never have to undergo the trial of legitimacy to which I have been subjected."

Sometimes, it seemed, the accusations were justified, as when, in China, which regularly executes prisoners with a bullet in the back of the head, she praised the justice system for being "quicker" than that in France. On another occasion, she referred to the "Taliban regime" in Afghanistan. The Taliban lost power in 2001.

There was also the question of amateurism. Royal had a habit of cancelling engagements at the last minute, dispatching underlings to address provincial audiences that had been patiently waiting for a glimpse of the Socialist Madonna.

Even her own electors in the first round, it turned out, doubted her suitability for the presidency. According to an opinion poll, only 16% of the people who voted for her felt that she had the "stature" of a president.

So France was quite discerning in this Presidential campaign, non? The French made clear that while they had no aversion to making history, they were not in the mood to tolerate amateurism at the highest levels of government. Ségolène Royal may have complained about the questions surrounding her competence. But evidently, those questions were eminently justified by her performance.

What will be Sarkozy's foreign policy program? It's likely outlines are spelled out here:

To the world, President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy sends this message: France is back. Sarkozy said in his victory speech that his France will stand up against tyranny, dictators and fundamentalist Muslim oppression of women - a global vision more in line with President Bush than Jacques Chirac, who defied Washington over Iraq and has been criticized for cozy ties with authoritarian rulers.

By urging the United States to take the lead on fighting global warming, Sarkozy also signaled that an invigorated friendship with Washington would not mean subservience. His speech Sunday provided comfort to a populace worried that France's global voice is fading.

"The message was, 'Don't take me for granted,'" said Francois Heisbourg, a leading expert on French strategic and foreign policy. "This was wise in terms of domestic policies but also in terms of the overall relationship. He was saying, 'I'm not going to be a poodle.'"

Sarkozy has won the label "Sarko the American" for openly admiring the get-up-and-go spirit in the United States, and indicated that he would toe a less-accommodating line toward the Arab world than his predecessors - whose close ties to the Middle East were rooted in France's past as a colonial power in the region.

Overall, though, his campaign gave short shrift to foreign policy, and his limited international experience has left many wondering how he will steer France in global affairs.

Sarkozy sought to quell that uncertainty in a speech barely 30 minutes after his electoral triumph.

France, he said, will stand alongside "all those persecuted by tyranny, by dictatorships." He reached out to "all those in the world who believe in the values of tolerance, freedom, democracy and humanism."

[. . .]

Chirac, too, spoke often of tolerance - but critics said that meant tolerating African dictators with whom France harbored longtime ties, and turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Russia and China. Though he cajoled the Western community into intervening in Bosnia in 1995, Chirac later spoke more of cultural understanding than exporting Western values.

Both Chirac and Sarkozy say the U.S.-led war in Iraq was a mistake, and the president-elect has called for a deadline for a U.S. pullout. But Sarkozy has not let that dampen his enthusiasm for the trans-Atlantic relationship: He eagerly met with Bush in September, drawing criticism from a populace that has had a complex and sometimes bumpy relationship with the United States.

He has also indicated that he would oppose war against Iran, although analysts predict he will stake out a tough stance in the coming weeks in international efforts to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The most obvious shift is likely to be felt in the Arab and broader Muslim worlds. Sarkozy has reached out to France's 5 million Muslims, but he also has been more open to Israel than Chirac; his support among French Jews was very strong.

"He has abandoned whatever remained of France's Arab policy," said Olivier Roy, a specialist on Islam at the National Center for Scientific Research. "It will mean less activism in the Arab world. He has chosen a position like the American neo-conservative position."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed confidence that Israeli-French relations would improve after years of acrimony.

There will quite clearly be differences between Sarkozy and the United States in the conduct of foreign affairs, as the article notes. This should surprise no one who believes that state interests are more influential in determining the conduct of a particular nation's foreign policy than are the beliefs of that nation's leaders. But Sarkozy has identified a confluence of interests between France and the United States and is likely to act on those interests as he places his own stamp on foreign affairs.

All of which means that Franco-American relations promise to be a whole lot more interesting during a Sarkozy Presidency than they have been in the recent past. And given the recent state of Franco-American relations, the partnership between France and the United States has nowhere to go but up.

And finally, what are the prospects of Sarkozy being able to implement his reforms? This article deserves mention for encapsulating part of the challenge Sarkozy will have to face as he seeks to reform France:

. . . the clearest break that Mr. Sarkozy represents from leaders like Mr. Chirac is in his background. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, he has always been viewed as an outsider by French elites. He failed to attend the prestigious National School of Administration, where almost every leading figure in French politics, including purported populist Ségolène Royal, went.

It is difficult for Americans to appreciate just how removed from the French people the nation's bureaucratic elite is. Its arrogance is mind-boggling. One of Mr. Chirac's ministers privately compared the public's repudiation of the EU Constitution in 2005 to a temper tantrum. Listen to former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the prime architect of the now-rejected 448-article European Constitution, when he was asked to respond to complaints that voters would have trouble understanding the dense document: "The text is easily read and quite well phrased, which I can say all the more easily since I wrote it myself."

Even Jean Michel Fourgous, a parliamentary member of Mr. Chirac's own Union for a Popular Movement, bemoans his party's refusal to adopt more-transparent and -consultative government. He told Time magazine that the country has "been hijacked by an intellectually brilliant elite that's dangerously ignorant about the economy." He notes that while the current government is made up largely of people who call themselves conservative, 80% of ministers have never worked at all in the private sector. The few who have "are tolerated, but shoved into subaltern posts."

Good luck, Sarko. You'll need it.