In France, political allegiance is passed on from generation to generation. As the country prepares to elect a new president tomorrow, three families share their views with Lara Marlowein Paris.
Les Ségolènistes
Mohamed Gamri and his wife, Nora
'I would have voted for any left-wing candidate against Sarkozy'
Mohamed Ghamri, 48, grew up in the "red suburbs" of the "neuf trois" - the postal district north of Paris where his Algerian immigrant parents settled. The French "social lift" functioned for him. "I was born in the Hôpital Lariboisière. I eat pork and drink wine like any Frenchman. I feel perfectly integrated," he says.
Mohamed went to university and became a social worker. As a child, he lived in a converted barn. Now he, his wife Nora, whose parents immigrated from Morocco, and their daughters Khadija and Soukaina, live in a comfortable flat in the dormer town of Cergy, west of Paris. Mohamed's loyalty shifted from the communists to the Socialist Party (PS). "Mentalities change," he explains. "One becomes bourgeois." Mohamed's daughter Khadija, a 21-year-old psychology student, bristles at her father's use of the word bourgeois. "The right says the PS is the caviar left," she says. "It's not true. Look around you." We're at the Charléty stadium, where the socialist candidate Ségolène Royal is holding her last Parisian rally. The crowd is younger and more racially mixed than at the right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's rallies.
Mohamed is a disillusioned socialist sympathiser. "I would have voted for any left-wing candidate against Sarkozy," he explains. "But being on the left doesn't mean much any more. In France, there are the privileged and then everybody else. Our rights shrink all the time. Everybody freaks out about security, and it's 'me, me, me'. Anything to do with the common good is finished. This is not the France I dream of. I don't believe in the PS, in its ability to change France. When Ségolène Royal talks about equal opportunity and justice, that speaks to me. But I like it less when she flirts with [the centrist candidate François] Bayrou. For me, he's a right-wing guy."
Khadija is a true believer. Tomorrow morning, she'll go early to the PS headquarters in the rue de Solférino to wait for the results, and what she hopes will be a victory celebration. Despite Royal's poor showing in opinion polls, father and daughter still believe she can win. Khadija is enthusiastic about Royal's promise of a "Sixth Republic" where officials can hold only one office and the government will no longer be able to rule by decree, and she likes the fact that Royal "put young people at the centre of her programme", with the promise of an "autonomy allowance" for every youth between the ages of 18 and 25.
Khadija officially joined the party last year so she could vote in the November primary. She refuses to reduce Royal's campaign to an anti-Sarkozy movement, but Sarkozy's candidacy was one of her motivations. "He's like an emperor," she says. "The socialists had a real primary. Sarkozy crushed all opposition and won with a dictator's score."
Sarkozy has transformed the democratic right into "the hard right", Mohamed says. "France is going to be like Chile under Pinochet," he predicts. "This is how it starts." "He says, 'France, love it or leave it'," chimes in Khadija. If Sarkozy wins, immigrants will not be allowed to bring their families to France unless they can lodge and support them, and new arrivals must speak French. "His policy of 'chosen immigration' means robbing developing countries of their best people," Khadija continues. "Whereas Ségolène talks about co-development with Africa, to make their lives better."
But again, Mohamed is disappointed by Royal. "She doesn't denounce the attacks against immigrants," he complains. "Every time there's an election in France, everybody dumps on immigrants. She should be brave enough to say, 'Stop!' And I don't hear it." Khadija is more understanding: "She'd lose too many votes."
Les Bayrouistes
Emmanuel Reynaud and his mother, Françoise
'I voted for Bayrou with my heart. I'll vote for Sarkozy with my head'
Emmanuel Reynaud (31) and his mother Françoise Boucher (62) are among the 6.8 million French people who voted for the centrist candidate, François Bayrou, in the first round on April 22nd. Both head small businesses. Reynaud owns a bistrot near the Bastille; Boucher has a public relations firm with three employees. The vote of the Bayrouistes will determine the result of tomorrow's poll.
Reynaud feels an enormous responsibility, but doesn't know who to vote for. "I think about it every day. I talk about it all the time," he says. His family origins, milieu and profession incline him to vote for the right. But he felt let down by the last five years of ineffectual right-wing government, and has serious reservations about Nicolas Sarkozy.
He voted for Bayrou in 2002 as well. "He's honest, authentic, modern. He's a European-style social democrat," he explains. Though she traditionally voted for the right, Boucher was influenced by her son. Mother and son share Bayrou's European fervour. And Boucher was drawn to Bayrou's goal of ending France's "left-right cleavage". "The idea has been buried for the time being," she sighs. "France isn't ready for it."
"I don't have any problems with Sarkozy's economic programme," Reynaud continues. He has difficulty recruiting staff for his restaurant, and likes Sarkozy's promise to abolish taxes and social charges on overtime. "It's his character and methods that worry me," he says. "His nervous disposition, his grip on the media, the way he threatens people. He's a demagogue, always on the defensive."
Reynaud liked Ségolène Royal until she won the socialist primary last November. "After that, her campaign became very disorganised. She was brave to move on without the elephants (PS old-timers). Then she called them back to help her; then we never saw them again. But I've seen her on television several times since the first round. She's radiant, liberated, at ease - less antipathetic than Sarkozy."
The catch is that neither Reynaud nor Boucher approve of Royal's programme. "Her idea of 'citizens' juries' is very dangerous," he says. "She doesn't seem to understand what she's saying," adds Boucher. "For example, she says she's going to 'lock out globalisation'. Who can claim such a thing today? And she wants to extend the 35-hour working week to every business in France." (Until now, small businesses were exempt.) An opinion poll published yesterday showed that 51 per cent of centrists now want Sarkozy to win. Initially, Boucher liked the fact that Royal was a woman who was an "elephant-slayer". "She had an extraordinary aura. She's shown great tenacity," Boucher says. But she will vote for Sarkozy tomorrow because she agrees with his policies on immigration, lifting restrictions on working hours and doing away with the "special regimes" whereby transport workers retire earlier than everyone else. "I like the idea that he'll put France back to work," she says.
The way Sarkozy betrayed his mentors Charles Pasqua and Jacques Chirac makes Reynaud uneasy. "He was at the interior ministry for four years and almost turned this country into a police state," he says. "His record in the banlieues isn't good. If you vote for him, you tell yourself, 'After all, it's only a five-year trial period'."
"I voted for Bayrou with my heart," says Boucher. "I'll vote for Sarkozy with my head. Not for Sarkozy, but for France, because I think he has the best chance of getting us out of this mess. He'll be hated, but afterwards, we'll be able to breathe."
Les Sarkozystes
Jean-Marie Lantran and his wife, Dany
'The left are like parents who let their children run wild'
Jean-Marie Lantran (75) is a civil engineer who completed his career as an expert at the World Bank in Washington, where his wife Dany (68) worked at the National Gallery. In retirement, the couple inhabit a small village near Fontainebleau, and keep a pied-à-terre in central Paris so they can visit exhibitions. They are devoted to their three grown daughters and seven grandchildren. And they are delighted at the prospect of Nicolas Sarkozy's probable victory tomorrow.
Dany, an admiral's daughter, has always voted for the right. In his youth, Jean-Marie voted once for the socialist Guy Mollet "because he said he would get us out of Algeria, after which he sent me to fight in Algeria". The issue of security - l'insécurité - first attracted the Lantrans to Sarkozy. "It was a taboo," explains Jean-Marie. "You were labelled a Nazi if you talked about it. [The extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie] Le Pen was the only one who talked about security and patriotism."
Sarkozy's stand on immigration and national identity is virtually the same as Le Pen's. So why is he acceptable, when Le Pen is not? Le Pen is a brilliant orator, the couple reply, but they would never vote for him. "There are real neo-Nazis in his gang," explains Jean-Marie. "Every time Le Pen was on the rise, he discredited himself with an anti-Semitic or xenophobic outburst." Before Sarkozy, Jean-Marie says, no respectable politician dared say "We need order in the streets, and discipline". "The left are like parents who let their children run wild," says Dany.
Ségolène Royal has repeatedly referred to the danger that Sarkozy's victory could unleash renewed violence across the country. "I'm afraid of that," Dany admits. "I even hesitated to vote for him for that reason. I heard a young man on television saying, 'If we don't like the way the vote goes, we'll set the country on fire'." For the socialists, continuing unrest in the immigrant banlieues is proof that Sarkozy has failed. "Sarkozy's mistake was to say he was going to solve the problem quickly," says Jean-Marie. "He should have made a Churchillian 'blood, sweat and tears' speech, saying it would take years."
In the past two years, Dany has been pickpocketed twice and the couple's car door was twice pried open. Three weeks ago, a friend's blond, blue-eyed 18-year-old grandson was mugged by a black youth at the Lantrans' metro station, Les Invalides, in a neighbourhood of government ministries and embassies.
Jean-Marie is reading a book entitled The Coming Anarchy and fears l'insécurité is the wave of the future.
"The idea of the book is that the world is becoming like the suburbs of Lagos," he says. "We're returning to a feudal system, where there's a local lord and his thugs. The French suburbs are going in that direction, if nothing is done about it."
The economy and unemployment are nonetheless the most important issues for them, says Jean-Marie. "That determines everything else," he explains.
They were impressed by their long stay in Washington. "Americans are efficient. They don't mind working two jobs. They're willing to move hundreds of kilometres to change jobs," says Dany. "They have a dynamism that we've lost." France is like a tandem bicycle, she continues. "The guy in the front is peddling, and the one behind just sits there with his legs stuck out, coasting."
"And he's the one who demonstrates," laughs Jean-Marie.