Anniversary of the No vote
Tuesday (the 29th May) was an anniversary which few if any of the French press picked up – yet it was only the second anniversary of a major event with international repercussions: on the 29th May two years’ ago the French rejected the European Referendum. It was, by any measure, a bold vote. By saying No to the European Constitution, the French voters effectively killed it, at the same time casting the European Union into a limbo-land from which it has not yet emerged. Why was its memory passed over in silence?
Only 24 months ago the vote was hailed as a milestone, proof of France’s individuality, its independence from the rest of the world – by saying No to the constitution, France was saying No to globalisation, to unchecked competition and foreign investment in France (another way of losing control of your own resources). The No vote was the crowning victory of Marie-Georges Buffet, National Secretary of the Communist Party and José Bové, a sheep-farmer and national hero who campaigns relentlessly against globalisation and what he believes to be the domination of agriculture (thus what we eat) by two or three multinational firms. Yet two years later Buffet and Bové have been abandoned. There is no other word for it: both stood in the recent presidential election, both received humiliating scores. Marie-Georges Buffet polled the lowest ever vote for a Communist candidate in a presidential election (just over 700,000), Bové did worse with less than 500,000. Buffet did so badly that it looks as though the once mighty Communist Party, so feared by General de Gaulle, bastion of post-war thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, has finally died and is no longer a credible part of the democratic scene. The party’s headquarters will be sold to pay their lost election expenses.
Why have French voters decided that what Buffet and Bové stand for is no longer viable? I don’t have an answer yet. I am simply stating what I see and hear. The shadow of that No vote hung heavily over the first part of the presidential campaign, everybody scared stiff that France would knock over the world’s furniture again. All through the campaign the thread of anti-globalisation, anti-freemarket, anti-capitalism was strong. Again and again France was described lovingly as an exception. So the international and national relief on Monday 23rd April, when it became clear that the French could vote responsibly, was the stuff of banner headlines. The ghost of the No vote to the European Constitution two short years ago had been laid to rest. To such a point that on its anniversary it is not mentioned, as if it had been a momentary lapse in an otherwise conventional marriage.