FRANCE: More Parisians seemed to be picnicking yesterday than queuing up to vote, writes Lara Marlowe.
The déjeuner sur l'herbe was a French tradition long before presidential elections. And sure enough, there were more Parisians picnicking on the Esplanade des Invalides yesterday than queuing in polling stations.
Laurent, Hervé, Levon, Jérôme and Ludovic, all aged 26 and 27, had spread out the camembert, baguettes and bordeaux, and were planning a game of football after their feast. The five friends' abstention rate - only three of them bothered to vote - was close to the national average. So was their assessment of the campaign.
"The level of debate was pathetic," said Laurent, a telecommunications engineer. "No important questions were addressed; they were selling themselves. It was all marketing, touting. They don't fight for ideals; they just say what they think people want to hear."
"We're getting as bad as the Americans," Hervé commiserated. For the first time, the presidential candidates' wives campaigned. When Paris Match identified the companion of the Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller - her bodyguard Bernard - the revelation got more coverage than her appeal for a general strike and factory take-overs.
Because polls showed that crime was the first concern of French people, President Jacques Chirac talked of little else. The Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, renounced the theme only late in the campaign, accusing Mr Chirac of being obsessive and helping the extreme right.
France hasn't grown accustomed to being a middle power, and their country's status in Europe and the world was a question that most voters thought was neglected. "France should push the Europeans to act when the Americans don't want to, for example in the Middle East," said Hervé, an auditor in agro-industry. "If every European country does its own thing, we'll never count." In the first round, the French vote for someone, he explained. In the run-off, they vote against the worst option. But at the end of the day, "the most important thing is whether we win the World Cup".
A few miles away, voters had to find their way through a maze of television lorries, because Mr Chirac pitched his campaign headquarters across the street from the town hall of the poor, racially mixed 10th arrondissement. Some found the choice of 16 candidates overwhelming. Not Vincent, a 24-year-old accountant. "The leading candidates didn't talk about anything important," he said. "But the number of contestants meant some ideas got through." He cast his ballot for Christiane Taubira, from Guyana, because she raised the otherwise totally neglected issue of integrating France's racial minorities. "Ms Taubira talked about breaking up the ghettos that generate crime," Vincent said.
Although nearly 10 per cent of the population is of north African Arab origin, there is not a single Arab cabinet minister or member of the National Assembly. The extreme right-wing candidates, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Bruno Mégret, proposed their own radical solution: don't integrate immigrants; deport them.
The most important question? "The role of the state," said Mireille (53), an oil company employee. "The French state does too much; I'm not for total economic liberalisation, but there ought to be a middle ground, and none of our candidates has found it." Marie-Thérèse (71) was disgusted by the candidates' "telling us their life stories, and beating up on each other." The proposal by three left-wing candidates, including Mr Jospin, that 18 to 25-year-olds be given an "autonomy allocation" - pocket money - was "an aberration", the retired nurse said. "They hand out too much money. There's work in France if you look for it."
Two of Marie-Thérèse's relatives emigrated because they were fed up with French taxes. The whirl of financial scandals around her choice for president, Mr Chirac, didn't worry Marie-Thérèse. "They've all dipped into the till," she said. "What about Mitterrand?"
After the last opinion polls on Friday, commentators alluded to "possible surprises" in the first round. They meant that Mr Le Pen could beat Mr Jospin, but few dared say it.
Coulibaly (28), an illegal immigrant from the Ivory Coast, runs an African hairdresser's across the street from Mr Chirac's headquarters. "All of us saw bigger trouble than Le Pen before we got here," he said. "France is too racially mixed now; they can't reverse it. Even the extreme right knows that - they just say it to attract voters."