WITH THE VOTERS:AMEL LAGEAT admitted she didn't know much about the man who just received her vote. Still, she couldn't have gone any other way. "Initially François Hollande seemed a bit woolly and not credible, but he showed – particularly in the debate last week – that he was solid and capable of being statesman-like," she said.
Lageat, who works in marketing and lives in Paris’s 15th arrondissement, always voted left, although she saw herself as closer to the Greens than the Socialists. What drove her, entering the polling station yesterday, was to remove Nicolas Sarkozy, who she felt never fitted in with her idea of what a president should be.
“It’s his style – he shifts in every direction,” she said. “Then there are the broken promises. Every time something happens, he takes out a magic wand and tells everyone it will be fixed. After 10 or 20 times, nobody believes it.”
Sarkozy apologised during the campaign for his behaviour during the first year of his term, acknowledging how some of his personal choices – celebrating his election in an expensive restaurant with billionaire friends, flaunting expensive watches or giving the public running updates on his romantic life, for example – had done him huge political damage.
Within 14 months of attaining power, Sarkozy’s poll ratings were at 30 per cent – and they never recovered. This became one of the Hollande campaign’s biggest weapons, portraying the incumbent as the “president of the rich” lacking a grasp of the solemnity of the office. This resonated with Lageat.
“We want a president who is more cultivated, who stands back a bit more,” she said. “People have never forgiven Sarkozy that “bling-bling”, extravagant side he showed. That’s not what people expect in a president.”
The southwestern 15th arrondissement, one of the biggest in the city, has been a right-wing bastion for decades, but parts of it were until recently predominantly working-class and the left still has pockets of strong support. The Socialist Party hopes a Hollande presidency could bring the arrondissement into play at the next local election.
At the Claude Débussy secondary school on Place du Commerce yesterday, there was plenty of support for Sarkozy – although, as with Hollande, as many voters spoke of their dislike of the other man as of passion for their own.
Marie Des Déserts, who described herself as a practising Catholic, said she was strongly against Hollande’s policies on moral questions and feared what his presidency would bring.
“Essentially it’s the dignity of the person – euthanasia and homosexual marriage,” she said.
Hollande’s manifesto promised to allow euthanasia in limited circumstances and to legislate for gay marriage and adoption, whereas Sarkozy opposed both ideas. “They may not be defended very well by Sarkozy, but Hollande doesn’t defend them at all,” added Des Déserts.
One of the Sarkozy camp’s hopes going into the weekend was that his support was underestimated by polling companies because many of his voters were reluctant to admit their preference. Annick Chevalier, a retired woman who professed “no interest” in politics, was among those who preferred not to tell The Irish Times how she voted yesterday. “I voted because it’s my duty, but I think they’re much the same. I don’t believe in either of them,” she said.
Did she want the election to bring change? “No, I don’t think so. In a crisis as big and global as this, there’s no magic wand.”
Across the city, in the central – and Socialist-run – fourth arrondissement, Hollande was expected to win comfortably.
That was the view of 34-year-old Laurent Deburge, a traditional left-wing voter whose only certainty was that he would vote against the incumbent.
“I had hoped Sarkozy would be like Napoleon III. At the beginning there was the authoritarian empire, then the second part of his reign was quite liberal. On the contrary, Sarkozy sent only extremist signals, it became more and more violent, instead of being conciliatory and unifying,” said Deburge.
France was a depressed country, he said, and needed “a reason to believe in itself. Even if it’s wishful thinking, we need a reason to hope.” Deburge would normally vote far-left, and up until the last minute he was weighing up whether to vote Hollande or blank. “We don’t know who Hollande is really. But maybe when we put him in this position it will give him inspiration and stature. ‘Change is Now’ is his slogan. I say: so show us.”
