26th April 2002
France has no shame.
That isn't to say France is shameless, it's to say France has nothing to be ashamed of.
I had, for a while, been in the "Don't vote - it only encourages them" camp. But after seeing Le Pen voted into the second round in the French vote, it shows the error of that thinking.
Let's crunch a few figures. I'm not sure of the exact amounts as I don't have a copy of Ouest
France to hand. But Lionel Jospin got between 11% and 13% of the vote. Le Pen received 0.8%
more than Jospin, with Chirac leading by a better margin.
Why are those figures important? Because consider the addition of the votes of both the Jospin
supporters and the Le Pen supporters. Around a quarter of the votes, right? Well, that is how
many people didn't bother to vote.
France is in shock. I'm not surprised, with long-standing Chirac being faced by a man who has
been described as "a racist commie" who plans to pull France out of the EU. It's a
pretty damn shocking vote - like polar opposites.
But all those who say France needs a rethink of it's electoral system...like hell it does. There
isn't a damned thing wrong with their voting, except for the fact that some twelve
people run for office (which is maybe why the vote is done in two stages?).
You cannot prevent people like Le Pen running, because where do you draw the line between who is
allowed and who is not allowed? Ban people who will be 'bad' for the country? Ban communists?
Ban all your competitors?
And you cannot alter the voting system. Because the voting system is not at fault. A bunch of
people exercised their democratic right to vote. They did exactly what they were supposed to do.
A quarter of the people, however, didn't bother to vote. Maybe they figured "Chirac? Jospin?
It's all the same to me.", and because of that, poor Jospin lost by 0.8% of a vote (around
a hundred thousand votes) to Le Pen, which is why France is apparently in turmoil.
People are predicting a landslide victory for Chirac, because there isn't so much support for the
National Front as to pull them that strongly ahead, and certainly all the Jospin voters are more
likely to support Chirac than Le Pen.
But let this be a lesson. To all voters, in any country.
You must cast your vote, when the time comes. Because if you don't bother, then those
who do bother will be the ones that get heard - and they might have a radically different idea of
life than you.
The fault, if fault must be assigned, is not the National Front, or Le Pen, or the French voting system. The fault, quite simply, is complacency.