In most European countries the head of states (Kings/Queens or presidents) are essentially just figure heads. Their power is limited, in the case of monarchs severely limited, to signing things, representing the nation in events and waving their hands in semi circular motion from slow moving vehicles. That’s not the case in France.
During the constitutional crisis of 1958 in the last days of the 4th Republic, there was a push to strengthen the powers of the president and move away from a purely parliamentary system. A new constitution was drafted and the French system, the present Fifth Republic, became an odd hybrid between a presidential republic like the USA and a parliamentary republic like Germany or Italy.
What’s the division of power between the President of France and the Prime minister?:
The president is directly elected by the French people every five years. The French Constitution declares him head of state and gives him control over foreign policy and defense.
After parliamentary elections—held every five years, or sooner if the president calls them—the president appoints a prime minister. The appointment requires the approval of Parliament, so the PM almost always comes from the party that controls the chamber. The prime minister serves as head of government and is in charge of domestic policy and day-to-day governing. He also recommends for presidential approval the other members of his Cabinet.
Cohabitation, in which the president has had to share power with a prime minister of a different party, has occurred three times since 1986. President Jacques Chirac, a Gaullist, dissolved Parliament in 1997, hoping to elect a majority of his own party. But he miscalculated. The Socialists won the majority of the seats in the new Parliament, and Chirac had to accept the Socialist Jospin as prime minister.
www.slate.com/...
The President is elected directly by the citizens. Initially it was for 7 years terms and in 2000 the constitution was changed to make them 5 years terms, precisely to try to evade the problems that cohabitation presented. If there isn’t cohabitation, and the President and Prime minister are from the same party, the President has normally more power over the party and then over the Prime Minister. The issue of cohabitation is particularly sanguine because often the guy that is elected president has been before primer minister, so the confrontation between both offices is always part of the general political play. The presidential election is a two round system: First all candidates from all the parties fight for it and then the two candidates with the most votes go into a second round head to head election. France has many political parties and most of them present candidates for the presidential election.
In 2002 France had a tormented presidential election. As stated in the above quote from Slate there was cohabitation. The President Jaques Chirac of the RPR (the old school Gaullist right wing party) was running for reelection. His main rival was the establishment Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin, who had been elected Prime Minister (the head of the government) in the previous election in 1997. That 1997 election had been an early election. It was called by Chirac in really bad political miscalculation because the sitting prime minister (Alain Juppe) was a guy from his party. Chirac wanted to have a larger majority but after loosing the election he had to face cohabitation with the socialist candidate Jospin, the guy that will soon try to run against him for his job.
On the right is a young Chirac as captured by Uderzo and Goscinny (a genius) in 1976 in one of the funniest Asterix adventures, “Obelix and Co”. In it Chirac is depicted as a young Roman Technocrat convincing Caesar that the best way to defeat the irreducible Gauls with the invisible hand of the market and not by the hands of armed legionaries.
Many in the left thought it was about time to finally kick Chirac out. Chirac had been in one or another corner of Frances political power for ever. He had been Mayor of Paris, minister, Prime minister twice and president once. Chirac also has a monumental ego that he loves to display. His policies were center right to right, but in a very odd French way difficult to compare to anything in the USA (I’ll leave it to someone else to give a good overview of Chirac’s presidency.) He was in this period particularly damaged by accusations of corruption from when he had been the major of Paris.
Jospin was a poor campaigner, a numbers guy, that although had done a lot of work to reform France towards liberal policies (gay rights, 35h working week) was not endeared to the voting public and was criticized by the left for not having done enough. The economy was doing fine in macroeconomic levels, but even though there was a job growth people where also losing well paid jobs, feeling the effects of globalization in a very protectionist country and there was clearly a sense that national politicians didn’t care about regular people. Jospins’ privatizations of Air France or French Telecom didn’t help him in that realm. There were also significant problems of integration of minorities, particularly Muslim youths and Africans. There was also a big discussion in the media about security and about immigration and of course the warped orbits were both met.
To the first round of the Presidential election there were 16 candidates!!. The left was represented by candidates from (in descending order from most voted ): the Socialist Party (Jospin’s), Workers Struggle (Troskyists), Citizens movement (A splinter from the Socialist Party to their left),The Greens, The Revolutionary communist League (another Troskyist party), The French Communist Party (old school Western Europe communists), The Radical Party of the Left (despite its name a center left party allied with the socialists party), Citizenship, Action, Participation for the 21st Century (a centrist Green party; yeah, I know) and the Workers’ party (if you thought “another Troskyist party?” you win). The other 7 parties included three center right parties: CPNT, UDF, LD, 2 right wing parties: Chirac’s RPR and the MNR, and two right wing ultra-nationalist parties: Jean Marie Lepen’s National Front of and its splinter group the MNR.
Jean Marie Lepen, who by the way has endorsed Donald Trump, was since the 70s a mainstay name in Europe of right-wing nativism and ultra nationalism. His party was, and still is under his daughter’s control (she, a much better politician than her dad, has run away from Trump), a coalition of working class french people felling left behind, particularly strong in some rural areas, with really old streaks of monarchism, colonialism, antisemitism, Vichy regime apologists and belligerent far right intellectuals. His rhetoric is not a simplistic as Trump’s but as far out border line fascist, including holocaust parsing and even a more ferocious anti immigrant racism.
The presidential campaign went on with many people engaged and big rallies. Everybody, everybody, and all the polls expected a Chirac vs Jospin election after the first round. People voted under that assumption, but to everyone's surprise when the results started to come in things began to look terrifyingly wrong. With a 73% participation (yeah people in Europe do vote with centrally organized elections, easy or automatic registration and elections not on business days) Chirac was ahead as expected with nearly 20% of the votes, but the fractured vote of the left had left Jospin with a lower than expected 16.1%. To everyone’s surprise Jean Marie Lepen with 16.8% was able to get the other slot for the final round. The left and center left vote combined was pretty close to 50%, Jospin would have very likely won the second round had he reached it. But now all those voters had no one even near to their ideals, principles or political philosophy representing them in the presidential election.
Vote for the crook not the fascist. LePen do not touch our REPUBLIC. LePen Standing France Collapses
The results were truly a national shock. Lepen running for President was a nightmare. It was in all the press, it became an international shame for France. Before nativist anti-imigrant rhetoric spiked with ultranacionalism, anti trade, anti big banks and anti EU populism started to spread through Europe like an untreated venereal disease someone Lepen was the an unthinkable leader for a post WWII European nation .
After the dismay, the grief, the panic, after the accusatory fingers pointing to everyone and the carousel firing squads dominated the talk shows the nation came to the realization that they still had a choice. You either voted for Jacques Chirac or Jean Marie Lepen or you stayed home and consented with whatever result. The response was seismic. The left decided there was no way Lepen could be allowed to become President by action or inaction. The idea was not just not to vote against Lepen, but to do it in great numbers and make his vote percentage as low as possible to save the Republic’s honor. France had to send a message. There were several large demonstrations vs the Lepen and his National Front. Socialists, social democrats, neoliberals, Greens, Communists, troskists, old anarchists, people that had not voted in years came out to say they would vote against Lepen, that they would vote for Chirac even if the had to put a clothespin on their noses (that was an actual initiative) while their voted. A slogan started to take shape “Vote for the crook not the fascist.”
When elections results came in the tectonic movement was clear. Participation was 80%, 7% more than in the previous round. It was a total rout, Lepen was soundly defeated: Chirac 82.21% vs Lepen 17.79%. Chirac received 20 million more votes than in the first round, Lepen just 700,000.
"Le Pen did not win because people like me, who always vote on the left and would never, ever vote for Chirac, voted for him," said Nicole Proust, 56, a medical secretary in Paris who voted for green candidate Noel Mamere in the first round. "It made me cry to vote for Chirac, but I did it." usatoday30.usatoday.com/...
France has a presidential election in 2017 that is shaping like the 2002 election with Lepen’s daughter in place of her dad, and probably Sarkozy as Chirac, and Hollande as Jospin. Like in the USA, and the very few other countries that have presidential systems, when it comes to presidential elections the choices are frequently limited and unsavory. In our present election we will have to pick between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I know many people would have loved to vote for Bernie or Warren or to reelect Obama. I know many right wingers that hate not to see Cruz or Rubio or Putin in their ballot. But those are not the choices, and lamenting why there are not other choices or pointing fingers is not going to change the options. Eventually in a binary system X or Y will be picked and not voting, or writing in , is only a personal gratification, because at the end you would have to deal with X or Y for four years.
Personally I don’t think Hillary Clinton is as bad of a choice as Chirac was, but Trump is certainly all the way as bad or worse than Lepen. At least with Lepen there was a certainty of the degree of fascism you were getting. With Trump is really hard to know because he doesn’t know.
Here is my last thought about binary elections and not voting or voting third party or writing someone’s name that only you are really going to notice; the coin is going to be tossed regardless if you pick and at any time a guy with a weird hairdo can come and ask you
What’s the most you ever lost in a coin toss?
Just call it, I can’t call it for you.
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