It’s hard to remember that the French presidential election campaign has not officially started yet. It won’t begin until April 9^th. First, each candidate has to obtain signatures from 500 elected representatives (for an explanation of that see my comment on Tomás Ruta’s comment on my blog on Le Pen, or my December France Profonde in Prospect). They have until 6.00 p.m. on the 18^th March to get them, with the list of signatures, showing us who has signed for which candidate, posted two days later. Until that moment, for the petits candidats it’s all just messing about waiting and hoping – indeed most spend their energy simply trying to get the signatures. Today is the official start of their quest. Before today, each candidate has only been allowed to obtain a promise – which may or may not be respected.

Of the 46 candidates, only 5 say they are sure they of their 500 signatures: Sarkozy, Royal, Bayrou, Marie-Georges Buffet (Communist) and Arlette Laguiller (Force Ouvrière). I’m not going to list the 41 who don’t have 500 promises: go to pluralisme.org which gives names and details. 6 of them stood in the 2002 elections and got a combined 35.28% of the first round vote, including Jean-Marie Le Pen who got through to the second round. He is said to be concerned he has not got 500 promises. It is said that the main candidates, who with their party’s deputés, regional councillors and mayors command far more than the requisite 500 representatives, tell their sympathisers not to sign for other candidates who might weaken their vote, trying to limit the number of rivals. The main reason for the terrible mess in the 2002 elections was that there were too many candidates on the left, which enabled Le Pen to beat the Socialist Jospin.

Yet if 35% of the electorate are deprived of their vote, democracy cannot be said to be well served. Some may feel the debate is somewhat academic, because only two candidates can get through into the second round, so those who want to vote for the petits candidats will be frustrated later anyway. Indeed in 2002 many socialists felt obliged to vote Chirac to prevent Le Pen becoming president.

According to Libération, most of the major minors, the extremes of left and right plus the Greens, have around 450-460 promises each. José Bové seems to be doing less well with 330, but he started after the others and with many sympathisers has time to catch up. Jean-Philippe Allenbach says he has 792 firm promises and the charismatic Rachid Nekkaz, who is auctioning on the web his flat and campaign headquarters to finance his campaign, says he has firm promises from 521 mayors. If you want to bid for a pleasant two room flat in Paris’ smart 16^th arrondissement, the starting price is 1 euro and for 700,000 you don’t have to wait for the April 15^th closing date.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 5:22 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.