Category: Local life

Un Poutou peut en cacher un autre …

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I was spotted. I’m obviously too conspicuous to be a good street photographer.

The guy stopped, looked at me, posed in front of Poutou and carried on down the road.

I put my camera away and moved on, but turned round to see him come back and start ripping off the Mélenchon poster…well, well.

So three days to go … 10 candidates, two rounds of voting and then maybe “Le changement, c’est maintenant”  …

The candidates, from left to right:

– Eva Joly, Norwegian-born green party representative, former prosecutor, described in her own words as representing “too much “strangeness”…
“I’ve got an accent. I wasn’t born here. I didn’t go to ENA [France’s elite graduate school for civil servants], I’m a woman, and not a young woman.” Apparently France is not ready for “strangeness.”

– I can’t type the next candidates name, I might be sick, but she’s described by her rival Mélenchon as a “a “filthy beast spitting hatred”. She also has her own song.

– Nicolas Sarkozy, the outgoing right-wing president. Carla Bruni is perhaps helping to pack his designer suitcases as we speak. She was last seen “borrowing” her husband’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, thanking followers for their support. How sweet …

– Jean-Luc Mélénchon, former Socialist who now heads co-heads a group of far left parties, le Front de Gauche. Described by the Guardian as “an entertaining loose cannon.” Currently with around 14% in the opinion polls.

– Philippe Poutou, Ford car worker, union leader and anti-capitalist (the guy on the poster, hidden by this chancer!). With current polls giving him around 0.5%, he’ll soon be back at work in his car plant. Big poutous Philippe, c’était bien.

– Nathalie Arthaud, representing the Lutte Ouvrière Troskyist party, replacing Arlette Laguiller who stood for 6 elections from 1974-2002. Similar score as the above in recent polls.

– Jacques Cheminade, from the Solidarity and Progress party, who belives Queen Elizabeth II’s fortune comes from drug money and that the KGB invented homosexuality. In his favour, he apparently predicted the current financial crisis as early as 1995.

– François Bayrou, centrist candidate, describing himself as the candidate of the “third way” Likely to be lose out on the third place to Mr Mélenchon or She-Who-Cannot-Be-Named, but the two front-runners will still have to try and win over his predicted 10-11% of the vote.

– Nicolas Dupont-Aignan of “Arise the Republic”. Another ousider whose most remarkable moment during this campaign came when his neighbours engaged in some rather noisy “bedroom sport” during a press conference held at his not-very-soundproofed campaign headquarters.

– François Hollande, Monsieur Nice Guy or Marshmallow Man, currently odds-on favourite to become France’s first Socialist president in 17 years. Once described by Sarkozy as similar to a sugarcube as “he dissolves in water”, he affirms a Mr Normal, anti-flamboyant style, contrary to the outgoing “president of bling”.

I keep saying outgoing, don’t I?

Take your pick!