Quote:
Originally posted by Ar-Cunin:
quote:
Well I hope he starts on the French Football team before the World Cup starts.
|
On a more serious note I don't worry to much - Le Pen got 17% of the vote ( the last two times he got 14% and 15%) so France has not had a sharp turn to the political right. The left got a combined vote of nearly 40% but it got spread out over so many candidates that Joispan failed to win thruogh to the second (and last) round. I don't worry though - Chirac will win that round easily - just look at the protest in French cities the last couple of days. The voters on the left will % in have to vote forChirac - and will do so to keep Le Pen out of office.[/QUOTE]I accept that Chirac will win by a landslide but the worse thing to do is not worry. The right wing extremists have been gaining support all over Europe in recent years.
Most famously Jorge Haider's Freedom Party in Austria. They increased their vote from 9.7% in 1986 to 27.2% in 1999 and formed part of the coalition government.
In Belgium Vlaams Blok, led by Filip Dewinter, regularly wins about 16% of the vote and is the largest party in Antwerp although it is kept out of power by a coalition of smaller parties.
In Denmark the Danish Peoples Party, although technically not in government, has a huge influence on the centre-right coalition government.
In Germany, the law and order movement of Ronald Schill a magistrate known as "judge merciless" - won 19 per cent of the vote in Hamburg last September.
In Italy the Northern League joined Berlusconi's coalition last November and Italy became the second EU country to include a far right party in government.
The Dutch vote on May 15 and Pim Fortuyn's party is expected to get between 12 - 16% of the vote and be the fourth largest party. They may well form part of a coalition party.
In Britain the British National Party are hoping to perform well in next weeks local elections in some northern towns which have large Asian communities. We do not have proportional representation here so it is virtually impossible for fringe parties to become members of coalitions.
In 1928 the Nazi Party won 18.3% of the national vote (remarkably similar to Le Pen's vote). In 1933 this rose to 37.2% and Hitler never looked back. Admittedly the world has changed since then but this is no time for apathy.
If one good thing comes out of the French Election it must be that this will sound as a wake up call to everyone who opposes racism.
One side note. The Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger (a Frenchman would you believe) has spoken today of his feeling of guilt that he didn't vote in Sunday's election. He said "I feel quite guilty as I didn’t vote. If you multiply my attitude by 180,000, it takes Le Pen out of the top two. France is the country of human rights, but we have woken up with a headache now."
[ 04-24-2002, 01:31 PM: Message edited by: Donut ]