Big Surprises in the Road to French Elections Day

Big Surprises in the Road to French Elections Day

By: Erreh Svaia

“We are the children of the revolution.”

Jean Luc Mélenchon

So now we are arriving to the final stages of the French presidential races and more and more surprise keep coming in from the land that gave us modern democracy, Hollande surprising declination to run for a new term, the surprising defeat of Alain Juppé, on the internal elections of The Republicans and the apparently robust candidacy of Francois Fillon, which came apart under the accusations of corruption, then the surprising nomination of radical leftist Benoit Hamon from The Socialist Party, that along the mercurial presidential race by Emmanuel Macron, a supposed centrist (apparently resurrecting Anthony Giddens “Third Way”) candidate with past ties with The Socialist Party, who looks like the perfect candidate to conjure the approval of Republicans and Socialists if a second round happens after the first election, but not everything has been said, as another truly amazing surprise is taking place with a strong advance by radical leftist candidate Jean Luc Mélenchon is slowly surpassing Hamon in popularity and it almost seen possible that he could be able to surpass Fillon also in order to became the third strongest candidate on the elections day.

Such volatile events seem to be truly energizing the last part of the presidential race, what in the past looked as an almost permanent race between traditional left and right now seems to lost relevance after new players have arrived to the stage, with the voters moving either to the far right or to the far left and some other staying at the center, we are witness to Marine Le Pen populist xenophobic stance with close ties to the Kremlin´s sponsored International Populists League, which already suffered a disappointing defeat in the Netherlands, on the other side the intriguing Mélenchon, who seems to spot the same type of skepticism towards the European Union, but sympathy towards refugees, that along an almost populist approach towards welfare states, what kind of troubles me is Mélenchon leaning towards seeing himself as the French “Hugo Chavez”, considering how bad is Venezuela after Chavez and Maduro Bolivarian Revolution, I don’t know how good or bad is Mélenchon sympathy towards the LATAM socialist icon, and if you also consider that SpanishPodemos leader Pablo Iglesias and the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras where also big followers of Chavismo, with also terrible outcomes, I guess it would be better if Mélenchon keeps his Neochavista credentials hidden very deep in the closet, he is still conceived as dangerous by financial markets and busienss sectors, also if he keeps his mouth shut and stops supporting Trump´s recent attacks on Syria and expressing sympathy towards Putin (just like Le Pen and Fillon, or has Putin changed his mind about his bet towards the election? has he turned his sight on Mélenchon?).

If the last scene of this French elections ends up with Le Pen, Macron and Mélenchon as the three strongest candidates, it’s going to be a very strident election day, a very weird time for France as its traditional left and right are simply blown away by new political currents, a curious analogy with the past USA elections with Le Pen playing Trump, Macro playing Clinton and Mélenchon playing Sanders, although the populist window is slowly closing after the Trump failure and after the crushing defeat of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, it looks hard for Le Pen to win in a convincing way on the first election day, and it’s going to be a little tough decisions for the French to decide whether to vote for Macron or for Mélenchon, and on the second round, is possible like in the USA, people will have to decide which candidate they will sacrifice in order to crush Le Pen, Macron or Mélenchon, guess the odds will be on Macron side.      

Another fascinating thing about the French elections is that Le Pen was supposedly to be “the black swan” the “Trump factor” the “undecipherable element”, but the case is that she has been just what people expected, xenophobic and trying to use “alternative facts” to distract voters from the awkward past of her party, the biggest surprises are not coming from Le Pen and looking at all the candidates she seems to be the most predictable one, her rhetoric and her possible arrival to the second round, and her subsequent defeat.