Big 145;oui146; for Jacques

Ultimately Jean-Marie Le Pen, for all his notoriety, turned out to be an opponent every politician dreams about. By spewing out enough bilge...

Ultimately Jean-Marie Le Pen, for all his notoriety, turned out to be an opponent every politician dreams about. By spewing out enough bilge to flood the sewers of Paris, the ex-paratrooper ensured that a man France had loved to hate until the other day, who was reviled for his corrupt ways and his lying tongue, went on to win the elections by a record 82 per cent of the vote. Jacques Chirac registered the highest ever margin of victory for a presidential candidate in the 44-year history of the Fifth Republic. He literally drove many very unlikely Chirac supporters into the 8216;j8217;aime Jacques8217; camp, including the radical gay group, 8216;Act Up8217;! Dare we then suggest that President Chirac award Le Pen with at least a Legion d8217;Honneur, for rendering exemplary services to both Chirac himself 8212; by getting him the handsome win 8212; and the nation 8212; by reminding the French that they faced an extraordinary threat.

Until a week ago, before the results of the first round of the French presidential elections had come in, most people in the country had dismissed Le Pen for the xenophobic joker he appeared to be. A walking repository of every paranoia under the sun, he peddled an extraordinary collection of hatreds. Le Pen detested international capitalism and internal communism; he detested Islam and he detested Jews; he detested the Masons and he detested immigrants; he detested the EU and he detested the euro; he detested gays and he detested Blacks; he detested globalisation and French welfare systems that 8216;8216;gave outsiders more than what they got in their own countries8217;8217;. He also had an extremely loose tongue and gave public vent to any stray train of vituperative thought that snaked its way through his mind, articulating what was hitherto left unsaid. Therefore he saw Nazi death camps as just a 8216;8216;detail of history8217;8217; and felt that 8216;8216;if we end up with 100 million foreigners in this country, France will no longer be France8217;8217;.

There is widespread public relief of course that instead of taking four steps back, France need now only take two steps back. Chirac8217;s win does not 8212; as every French citizen knows 8212; represent a win for France. It will now be back to the bad old days when government functioned at an entirely different plane to that of the ordinary citizen. The apathy such a disconnect created was already evident in the first round of the presidential election, which registered an unprecedented 28 per cent abstention. In a few weeks, with Le Pen consigned to the dust bin of history 8212; it is unlikely that the man at 73 years of age will have another shy at the presidential coconut 8212; that apathy will in all likelihood surface again. Ironically, it is precisely such apathy that allowed Le Pen to record his 16.86 per cent vote in the first round of these elections and it could, in the future, provide a fillip to the careers of those who subscribe to his particular brand of poison. So how does one translate the 8216;Ouf!8217;, that one newspaper had as its headline on Monday morning? A sigh of relief, hope or despair?