FRANCE: Lara Marlowewas out and about with some of the less well known presidential candidates
Frédéric Nihous sat onstage in the auditorium in this small town in a wine-growing region. About 100 men and two or three women with weathered faces listened. The 39-year-old presidential candidate, who holds a law degree, wore a suit and tie; the local members of the Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Traditions (CPNT) party were dressed in shabby anoraks and jumpers.
This was his 43rd rally since September, Nihous explained. "I go to see real people in the real country. Our campaign is authentic." The banner clipped to the table said "Ruralité d'abord" (Country Life First), his slogan.
France's 1.3 million hunters vote en masse for CPNT. The party also purports to represent 15 million French rural-dwellers, close to one-fifth of the population, who inhabit 80 per cent of French territory. Nihous says they're treated like second-class citizens. "The government closes everything in rural zones. From post offices to train stations and police commissariats - even the tax collection agencies." If he scores well in the first round on April 22, Nihous hopes to parlay his support for the run-off into firm commitments to implement CPNT's agenda.
It's difficult to say whether Nihous' presence on the ballot is a sign of flourishing democracy or French egalitarianism pushed to absurd lengths. Nihous is one of 12 candidates, only three of whom (Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal and François Bayrou) have a chance of reaching the Élysée Palace.
For Nihous, the rural-urban divide has replaced the left-right division. But the rest of the candidates' list is witness to the eccentricity of the French body politic: five candidates from the extreme left, including three Trotskyists; and two from the extreme right.
The extremes are often at odds with their ideological brothers. The National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen is suing his rival Philippe de Villiers for allegedly trying to prevent him obtaining the 500 signatures he needed to stand in the election. In a sordid sideshow to the campaign, one of de Villiers' sons is suing his brother for rape.
Combined, the extreme left parties should win about 12 per cent of the vote, but they couldn't agree on a joint candidate. Now the Communist Revolutionary League's candidate, a 32-year-old baby-faced postman named Olivier Besancenot, is running ahead of the others, with up to 5 per cent of the vote in opinion polls. His slogan: "Our lives are worth more than their profits."
Besancenot is seen as the successor to Arlette Laguiller, the ageing Trotskyist who has been the candidate for Workers' Struggle in every presidential election since 1974. This is "Arlette's" last campaign, but she hasn't lost her fervour. She's anti-capitalist, she declares, because "being anti-liberal means merely grinding down the claws of capitalists, without tearing out their fangs." Then there's José Bové, the pipe-smoking, mustachioed anti-globalisation candidate who has served time in prison for ransacking a McDonald's restaurant and attacking fields of genetically modified corn. Bové opposes new generation of nuclear power reactors, incinerators and highways.
The green candidate Dominique Voynet, a former environment minister and senator, is suffering from the "useful vote" ethic on the left after the socialist candidate was knocked out in the first round by Le Pen in 2002. The Greens will give their votes to Ségolène Royal in the run-off, but Voynet wants to avoid humiliation on April 22. "It would be better for everyone if the socialists concentrated on their voters going over to (Bayrou's) UDF, and stopped blackmailing the ecologists," Voynet said at a rally on Thursday night.
This melee is financed by the French taxpayer. All 12 candidates will be reimbursed up to €800,000 in campaign expenses on presentation of receipts. Those who pass the 5 per cent mark may claim up to €8 million.
Since the official list of candidates was published on March 20th, all 12 candidates have been guaranteed equal speaking time on air. As of midnight on Sunday, when the final two-week stage of the campaign officially begins, French radio and television must also devote equal coverage to "little" and "big" candidates. The media watchdog CSA will be standing by to punish violations.
Does it make sense to force-feed voters with coverage of unknown candidates, when they'd rather hear about those who might actually become president? "If anyone asks such a question, it means we are no longer in a republic, in a democracy," Nihous says, offended. "We need equal time. We've only had it for three weeks. Before, it was Ségo-Sarko saturation."
Nihous would like months, not weeks, of equal time, and equal government financing for all 12 candidates. "Equality gives everyone a chance," he explains. "We made the French revolution. So we're particularly attached to the abolition of privilege." The three leading candidates all supported the European constitutional treaty. Almost all the others opposed it, including CPNT.
"Europe is destroying our public services," Nihous says. He blames the EU's Natura 2000 programme for destroying 400,000 hectares of French vineyards and for banning fishermen from the banks of some French rivers.
Enlargement brought France's competitors into the EU, he says: "Now our companies are outsourcing to new member states, with EU subsidies." He'd like to see France withdraw from the euro zone.
The CPNT programme would promote bull-fighting and taxidermy and legalise the shooting of protected cormorants, who kill up to three kilograms of fish every day, says Nihous.
Saving rural France strikes a chord with most Frenchmen, but hunting has become so politically incorrect that Nihous avoids the subject on radio and television.
"We live in Bambi society, a Walt Disney society in which death has been sanitised and dramatised. Hunting isn't killing for the sake of killing. It's part of the order of things," he explains.
At midnight on Sunday, a US-owned company called Clear Channel has been contracted to put up campaign posters all over the country. But the process is threatened by a French tradition almost as old as equality: a strike for higher wages.