FRANCE:François Bayrou's Irish ancestry injected a cheerful note into an otherwise serious press conference (the main focus was on crisis) during which the French presidential candidate presented his programme yesterday.
After The Irish Timesreported that Mr Bayrou is descended from a Dorgan from Cork, I received an e-mail from the Irish poet and member of Aosdána, Theo Dorgan, saying they must be related.
He hasn't yet met Mr Dorgan, Mr Bayrou said yesterday, "but since Amélie Dorgan was my grandmother, I am delighted to learn of this literary relation."
It may take a genealogist to establish the exact relationship between him and the Irish poet. Mr Bayrou isn't sure how many generations back his ancestors emigrated to Pau, in southwest France.
Mr Bayrou was less enchanted with my other question: Is the "Bayrou moment" over? That's what the right-wing UMP and socialist parties have been crowing since the weekend, when the centrist candidate's share of the first round vote subsided to 18 per cent.
Mr Bayrou's earlier rise to a second place tie with the socialist candidate Ségolène Royal terrified the leading candidates, because he would beat either of them if he makes it to the May 6th run-off. One Paris Match poll said Mr Bayrou would win 57 per cent of the vote against 43 per cent for Mr Sarkozy; 59 per cent against 41 per cent if he faced Ms Royal.
When he was tied with Ms Royal, "All my friends said, 'Francois, don't let it go to your head'," Mr Bayrou recalled, adding that he is back up to 20 per cent (compared to 23 per cent for Ms Royal) in a poll to be published today. In the past, the third place candidate always rose in the last weeks, while the leading candidate lost ground, he added. In a Freudian slip that provoked laughter, Mr Bayrou later spoke of sondages (polls) when he meant to say chômage (unemployment).
Breaking the UMP-socialist monopoly on power is the only way to change French politics, Mr Bayrou says. The main argument against him has been that the left/right divide is as French as Camembert cheese, that a government of the centre would be an unnatural, immobile creature.
If there is one thing the three main candidates agree on, it is that France is deep in crisis. When Ms Royal presented her programme on February 11th, she listed seven different types of crisis. When Mr Sarkozy presented his programme on Monday, he too listed seven crises, though not exactly the same ones. Mr Bayrou ratcheted up the crisis rating yesterday.
"France is going through the most serious crisis of her recent history," he said. The crisis was social, economic, democratic. It was a crisis of institutions, of confidence between citizens and the state, "a crisis of unprecedented gravity since the liberation [ from Nazi occupation]," Mr Bayrou continued.
"Never before have we had at the same time a crisis of public finance, a crisis of employment, of poor growth, of doubts about education, of abandoned [ immigrant] suburbs, of anxiety over globalisation, of pensions . . . The crisis is general, for the first time." Rebuilding confidence is the main theme of Mr Bayrou's programme. He would increase overtime payments by 35 per cent, and would enact a "small business act" that would reserve a share of public contracts for small and medium companies.
Alone among the leading candidates, he has set a high priority on reducing the national debt. His programme is closer to Ms Royal's than Mr Sarkozy's, with provisions for helping battered women, making housing more accessible to the poor and reforming France's institutions.
Mr Bayrou promises to do away with the École Nationale D'administration, which produces the elite class of high-ranking civil servants and politicians - including Ms Royal. "It's not admissible that all those with important responsibilities come from the same mould," he said.
"There's a glass ceiling, and above it is a little club of people who were trained together, who speak a language that the French no longer understand."