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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The hole in the middle
By Gavin BowdAnalysts and scholars have traditionally drawn distinctions between the political cultures of France and the Anglo-Saxon world. According to the common theory, French political life is based on division and conflict, and often turns violent: it is, after all, the French Revolution which invented the terms Left and Right. In the liberal democracies of Britain and the US, however, politics is conducted on the basis of consensus, and the gradual, non-violent reform of institutions.
Recently, certain commentators took it on themselves to announce the end of this distinction: with the collapse of socialism, and the disappearance of religious fundamentalism and monarchism, France, they claimed, had joined the happy consensus in the centre.
The events of the last few weeks, however, have confirmed -- if indeed such confirmation was needed -- the continually fractious and unstable nature of Gallic political life. As May's European elections swing onto the horizon, a number of developments are already threatening to undermine the authority of the classic parties of Left and Right. This crisis is visible in recent opinion polls which show a substantial fall-off in the popularity of both Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
On the Left, most of the recent trouble stems from the coalition government's response to the disturbing growth of youth delinquency throughout urban France: riots, indiscriminate murder, bomb explosions in schools, the assault and even rape of teachers. Minister of the Interior Jean-Pierre Chevènement, noted for his hard line on law and order, recently announced drastic measures, including detention camps for young offenders. A substantial rise in the minister's opinion poll ratings followed, which would seem to prove that his muscular republicanism chimes well with the public mood. Nevertheless, his proposals have run into opposition from fellow ministers, including his colleague in the justice ministry, Elizabeth Guigou, who is personally dismayed by his authoritarianism.
The question of law and order has once again revealed an important fault-line in the French Left: that separating the 'liberal-libertarians' -- who believe in individual freedoms and European unification -- from the 'bolsho-bonapartists' -- who want to see a strong state and remain, despite all inducements, resolutely eurosceptic. In the former camp, Guigou is joined by Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the Green leader, Dominique Voynet; behind Chevènement stands the Communist transport minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot.
This opposition between 'lilis' and 'bobos' can be traced back to the Revolution and the bloody conflict between dissolute Danton and the prim Robespierre. Chevènement, a latter-day reincarnation of Jacobin vertu, has also caused considerable controversy with his remarks about the former May 1968 firebrand, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who is leading the French Greens' European campaign. The interior minister denounced 'Dany le Rouge', deputy mayor of Frankfurt, as belonging to the "globalised elite": the Greens, said Chevènement, "had gone to Germany to find some votes". The allusion to Cohn-Bendit's nationality was particularly unfortunate, echoing the infamous May 68 attack on the "German anarchist" by then Communist leader Georges Marchais. At the time, Marchais' remark was so successfully distorted, as to provoke leftist students to fill the streets of Paris, chanting, "We are all Germans and Jews". In a muted replay of the earlier incident, Chevènement's words -- whether despite or because they articulated an uncomfortable truth about the Green Party's electoral opportunism -- had various soixante-huitards Parisian intellectuals attacking the minister of the interior as an "anti-Semite" and spreading rumours about alleged past links with the Far Right.
More worrying for parts of the Left has been Jospin's unwillingness to distance himself from Chevènement, who has only recently returned from a coma -- as he himself put it, "I have come from further away than Cohn-Bendit!" -- to make his oracular utterances. It was hoped by some that Jospin would represent a 'third way' synthesis between 'lilis' and 'bobos' -- a French version of the consensus politics practised by Social Democratic counterparts in Britain and Germany. Now, this end to partisanship seems illusory -- a prospect which excites not only Cohn-Bendit, but also the Trotskyite Left, which is hoping to make inroads into the governing parties' electorate.
Last week, a joint meeting was held in Paris by the leaders of the main Trotskyist parties, Alain Krivine and Arlette Laguiller. Three decades of sectarian sniping were put behind them in a red-flag-bedecked love-in. These guardians of the revolutionary flame are particularly worrying to the Communists, who are vulnerable to accusations of compromising their principles and diluting their identity.
This crisis on the Left would have been a wonderful opportunity for their opponents -- had it not come at a truly terrible time for the French Right, already notorious throughout Europe as "the most stupid Right in the world". The National Front (FN) has fallen victim of its own electoral success. Jean-Marie Le Pen has been deserted by one of his deputies, Bruno Mégret, who plans to integrate that part of the FN which has followed him into the wider classical Right. That Right, in turn, is now split over whether to accept the hand of friendship -- and the electoral benefits -- they are being offered by the renegade neo-Fascists. Former finance minister Alain Madelin, who first achieved notoriety as a fascist street-fighter with the "Occident" group in May 1968, and is now leader of the Démocratie Libérale Party, is just one influential rightist who is openly favourable to such an alliance. But, if Mégret's gamble has inflicted collateral damage on Le Pen's apparatus, the turncoat deputy appears to have forgotten that the FN's appeal has always resided precisely in its pariah status.
At the end of January, the Right seemed for a moment to unite in a mass demonstration in Paris against the Left's proposals for legally recognising homosexual cohabitation. Faced with the moral decadence emanating from the libertines of the Rive Gauche, they showed themselves still capable of fulsome protest. But observing the bizarre menagerie that converged on the Place de la République -- Lepenistes and Mégretistes, Catholic fundamentalists, Islamists, Jews, moderate Gaullists -- it was hard to see how such a fragile, cosmopolitan coalition could survive long, once deprived of a common enemy. The hit film in French cinemas this winter is called, simply, Sombre. The political life of the nation, too, would seem to be sinking back into all-too-familiar darkness and confusion.
