Sunday night France elected a new president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The new head of state and head of the armed forces will seek a parliamentary majority in the June legislative elections so as to consolidate his power as head of government.

Encouraged by the tremendous enthusiasm and interest in her candidacy, Ségolène Royale announced her intention to continue the fight to build support for the left and the policies of the left, in the run-up to the legislative elections, and afterwards. The Socialist candidate emerges as the eventual inheritor on the left, when the right fails to meet expectations.

The election outcome confirmed the ability of Sarkozy to win support from the 13-14 per cent of the electorate that make up the extreme right. Despite appeals by the National Front leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to his supporters to abstain, Sarkozy saw his role as the agitator of fears, resentments and intolerance towards immigrants, workers and the world-at-large, pay off at the ballot box.

By the election of 2007, the left coalition of Socialists and Communists that made François Mitterand twice president of France had lost its force. The candidacy of Ségolène Royal received tepid support from some of her erstwhile rivals within the Socialist party, despite her evident popularity with left voters. The Communist Party candidate for president won only two per cent in the first round of voting, revealing the long-term decline of what was once the largest party in France.

The Green Party, an important new component of the Socialist parliamentary majority of Lionel Jospin, fared no better with 1.5 per cent. The entire range of left parties gathered 37 per cent of the vote with the Socialists taking most of it, with 26 per cent. Sarkozy got 31 per cent, with the centre right receiving 18 per cent.

In the decisive run-off of second round voting, the centre right voters split evenly, and the extreme right electorate put Sarkozy over the top with 53 per cent of the total.

Elements of the Sarkozy campaign make the flesh creep. First, he denied any wrongdoing by France in building a colonial empire. While France had a better record in bringing education to its imperial possessions than, say, Belgium, the Indochina and Algerian wars were hardly the result of injustices against France.

Second, after President Jacques Chirac had forced France to face its Vichy past as complicit in the deportation, murder and execution of Jewish French citizens, Sarkozy went out of his way to play down the crimes committed by the French in occupied France.

Thirdly, Sarkozy denied the positive achievements of the May 1968 uprising, choosing instead to blame those events, and that generation, for the supposed ills of France today. The student revolt of 1968, supported by workers, led to a tripling of the minimum wage, and brought democratic energy to the Fifth Republic, so dominated by presidential power, as incarnated in the person of General Charles De Gaulle.

Sarkozy exhibits open contempt for contemporary France. In his campaign, he routinely denounced his own French compatriots as lazy, undignified and lacking patriotism, before announcing the need to drop the standard 35 hour work week established under the Socialists, in order to restore discipline and international competitiveness. Perversely, for someone with a strong Republican view of equality, he supports affirmative action for minority groups, leaving observers pondering just what kind of action he has in mind.

In the second round vote, demographics showed Sarkozy winning 68 per cent of the sizable 70 plus French age group, and Royal leading in the smaller 18- 24 group. Women voted 52 per cent for the right wing candidate.

The French constitution gives the president the authority of an American style president elected directly, and the power to act of a Westminster model prime minister heading a cabinet government — providing he commands a majority in the parliament.

This is a presidential regime without the checks and balances of a legislature. Upcoming legislative elections will give France a second chance to debate the future. It looks as if the centre right will fragment. Some are attempting to form a new more centrist party around the presidential candidate François Bayrou. Most of the leading centre right figures will stay out of this attempt to build a third way. They supported Sarkozy, and expect to be named to his cabinet.

With voter turnout of about 85 percent, just over one-half of France has elected a man feared by the other half. This time the effort to demonize Royal was more successful than the effort to build an anti-Sarkozy movement.

As the winning candidate left his luxurious hotel in the swank 8th district of Paris for a private jet flight to Malta, where a yacht awaited him for a Mediterranean cruise, riots broke out in a few major centres and 730 cars were burned.

Duncan Cameron

Duncan Cameron

Born in Victoria B.C. in 1944, Duncan now lives in Vancouver. Following graduation from the University of Alberta he joined the Department of Finance (Ottawa) in 1966 and was financial advisor to the...