If it’s true, then war could follow. There’s a madness, growing possibly to violence, resulting from this business of getting signatures. Like throwing a double six to start a board game, each candidate needs to have 500 signatures from elected representatives to kick off their presidential campaign (and qualify for financial support). The main parties rely on their parliamentary deputés, their regional councillors and the mayors of big and not so big towns who are all party-based. So the independent candidates have to go cap in hand to anyone left, meaning the rural mayors, many of whom are not affiliated to a party. Both extremes, left and right, have serious problems getting the requisite signatures. On the left, the Socialist Party has formally told all its representatives not to sign for anyone except Ségolène Royal: one of the reasons Lionel Jospin failed to reach the 2^nd round in 2002 was the plethora of candidates on the left. So this year she is desperate to limit the number by squeezing the signatures.

So what happens? Neither of the two extreme-left candidates, the Trotskyist Olivier Besancenot nor the anti-global José Bové, have anything like their 500 promises, let alone the signatures themselves. The shepherd Bové has counted only 353 into his fold, whereas Besancenot may have at most a hundred more. Meanwhile, thanks to Mme Royal’s whipping them into line, rural mayors willing to put their names on the left-of-left are a dwindling resource. And as the stakes get higher and the commodity gets rarer, the inevitable is bound to happen. So far the violence is virtual, on the web, but given M. Bové’s oft-repeated calls for direct action and civil disobedience, and his own willingness to go to prison for his beliefs, it is not inconceivable that amongst his supporters something more physical may happen.

In their blogs several Bové militants proudly affirm that they have “changed the minds” of 10 mayors who had agreed to sign for Besancenot. They did this by the simple expedient of going to see them. It is true, given that most of these mayors are rural, therefore agricultural, they may feel greater affinity with the sheep-farming Bové than with the urban postman Besancenot.

However, some of Bové’s own supporters criticise this form of field work. “This is not how you bring about a radically different sort of politics,” say some. “Our whole approach is to say José is not dividing the left but bringing it together.” Other supporters are unrepentant: “It’s quite normal to take Besancenot’s signatures. The political weakness of his candidacy is the duplicity of the LCR (the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire – Besancenot’s party).”

While this is going on, many mayors are going on “strike” – refusing to sign for anyone: “Every five years the candidates come and pester us,” says the mayor of a village with 750 inhabitants. “The rest of the time they ignore us.” Well at least this form of democracy is also good theatre.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Political, The pack. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.