For one thing, meeting locals in Chartres can only be done on Saturdays or Sundays. Like Rouen or Orleans, Chartres has become a suburb of Paris….people take an early train and come back late.
What worries me as a Frenchman, is to see well off people ready not to vote paving the way to a Mélenchon who is clinically certified crazy. Does one has to like Macron to give him a majority over a bunch of self appointed guérilleros and a defunct socialist party ? What a joke !!!
If people decide not to go to the polling booth and see Mélenchon doing cartwheels Sunday evening, it will be Brexit revisited when these young people decided to stay in bed and went on whinging for the last 6 years…..only….it will be a lot more painful for the the French.
Writing from the shores of the Lake Constance in Bavaria, I realise, as if I needed to, how France is a divided unhappy country. It was always unhappy, just not divided in my childhood. It looks as if they want to hurt themselves. Sadly, I live in a suburb where Macron will score 70 % and wether I vote or not will not make any difference.
What nonsense. Mélenchon clinically crazy? He’s one of the most intelligent and interesting politicians in the public arena today, who has managed the unlikely task of bringing the France Insoumise, socialists, greens, and communists together for the first time in almost 100 years. Macron has disgusted the electorate (and especially the young electorate) by ruling France as a one-man-show, relegating the parliament to a body of yes-men who give him emergency powers and sit back to watch. The reason the French electorate is so unlikely to vote is because Macron has largely accentuated the democratic crisis already in place. The two-round elections have turned into a sham, with just enough people still voting for the candidate who happens to make it to round 2 against the far right. What France needs is a complete reform of its institutions, including how elections are decided, and the creation of a strong and sufficiently financed independent judiciary. I for one will happily vote for Mélenchon’s candidate on Sunday.
Good for you Vlad….a guy able to shout : do not touch me, la république c’est moi !!! On a judiciary mandated police search of his domicile, is….as far as I am concerned, certified loopy.
Chavez, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Robespierre are his heroes……glad you can sleep at night……and I hope you will not get a hangover in 3 weeks after Macron has got a majority.
Cuz…..like it or not and despite the media dribble …..he will get a majority and your hero will get his marching papers. But it seems the war in Ukraine is not scary enough. So here comes Melenchon. A month ago the European….the world press was heralding the return of Hitler in the shape of Marine Le Pen……look where she is now…. The same fate is awaiting this clown of Melenchon…..scary clown actuelly.
Last but not least……his admiration for the Great statesman Putin is. How come nobody among his followers……pretty pathetic followers….socialists…..greens ….who sold their soul to get a jump seat on the bandwagon, do not mention this rather embarrassing fact. Same for the press who seems to be mesmerised by the great speaker …….cynicism at its best.
Last edited 1 year ago by Bruno Lucy
JP Martin
1 year ago
Apathy is a major problem in France because people despair at the multiple dysfunctions of the state (police, judiciary, health system, etc.) but have no confidence in the political choices on offer. People look at the decadent state of the country and the political landscape and then wonder if there is any point. The situation is very grave but this article barely scratches the surface; it doesn’t ask any important questions.
I don’t understand anything about the politics in France and I’m sure I have no real sense of what is going on there but it seems to me that Le Pen would have been the sensible choice for making any real changes. I don’t understand the griping about Macron when they willingly voted him in; they voted for his policies.
Griping is a national pastime (about everything, not just politics). I suspect that most of the people who complain bitterly about Macron never seriously considered voting for anyone else. For many others, the policies of Macron are to their personal benefit so they prefer to ignore the broader damage being done by this government. As for Marine Le Pen, she is the perennial candidate (i.e. perennial loser). She has her qualities but she has also many flaws. This time, I thought her campaign lacked energy. If anything, she performed better than I expected.
For one thing, meeting locals in Chartres can only be done on Saturdays or Sundays. Like Rouen or Orleans, Chartres has become a suburb of Paris….people take an early train and come back late.
What worries me as a Frenchman, is to see well off people ready not to vote paving the way to a Mélenchon who is clinically certified crazy. Does one has to like Macron to give him a majority over a bunch of self appointed guérilleros and a defunct socialist party ? What a joke !!!
If people decide not to go to the polling booth and see Mélenchon doing cartwheels Sunday evening, it will be Brexit revisited when these young people decided to stay in bed and went on whinging for the last 6 years…..only….it will be a lot more painful for the the French.
Writing from the shores of the Lake Constance in Bavaria, I realise, as if I needed to, how France is a divided unhappy country. It was always unhappy, just not divided in my childhood. It looks as if they want to hurt themselves. Sadly, I live in a suburb where Macron will score 70 % and wether I vote or not will not make any difference.
What nonsense. Mélenchon clinically crazy? He’s one of the most intelligent and interesting politicians in the public arena today, who has managed the unlikely task of bringing the France Insoumise, socialists, greens, and communists together for the first time in almost 100 years. Macron has disgusted the electorate (and especially the young electorate) by ruling France as a one-man-show, relegating the parliament to a body of yes-men who give him emergency powers and sit back to watch. The reason the French electorate is so unlikely to vote is because Macron has largely accentuated the democratic crisis already in place. The two-round elections have turned into a sham, with just enough people still voting for the candidate who happens to make it to round 2 against the far right. What France needs is a complete reform of its institutions, including how elections are decided, and the creation of a strong and sufficiently financed independent judiciary. I for one will happily vote for Mélenchon’s candidate on Sunday.
Good for you Vlad….a guy able to shout : do not touch me, la république c’est moi !!! On a judiciary mandated police search of his domicile, is….as far as I am concerned, certified loopy.
Chavez, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Robespierre are his heroes……glad you can sleep at night……and I hope you will not get a hangover in 3 weeks after Macron has got a majority.
Cuz…..like it or not and despite the media dribble …..he will get a majority and your hero will get his marching papers. But it seems the war in Ukraine is not scary enough. So here comes Melenchon. A month ago the European….the world press was heralding the return of Hitler in the shape of Marine Le Pen……look where she is now…. The same fate is awaiting this clown of Melenchon…..scary clown actuelly.
Last but not least……his admiration for the Great statesman Putin is. How come nobody among his followers……pretty pathetic followers….socialists…..greens ….who sold their soul to get a jump seat on the bandwagon, do not mention this rather embarrassing fact. Same for the press who seems to be mesmerised by the great speaker …….cynicism at its best.
Apathy is a major problem in France because people despair at the multiple dysfunctions of the state (police, judiciary, health system, etc.) but have no confidence in the political choices on offer. People look at the decadent state of the country and the political landscape and then wonder if there is any point. The situation is very grave but this article barely scratches the surface; it doesn’t ask any important questions.
I don’t understand anything about the politics in France and I’m sure I have no real sense of what is going on there but it seems to me that Le Pen would have been the sensible choice for making any real changes. I don’t understand the griping about Macron when they willingly voted him in; they voted for his policies.
Griping is a national pastime (about everything, not just politics). I suspect that most of the people who complain bitterly about Macron never seriously considered voting for anyone else. For many others, the policies of Macron are to their personal benefit so they prefer to ignore the broader damage being done by this government. As for Marine Le Pen, she is the perennial candidate (i.e. perennial loser). She has her qualities but she has also many flaws. This time, I thought her campaign lacked energy. If anything, she performed better than I expected.