My experience with French politics...

Well, Sunday night proved to be exciting!

First some background information: Sunday was the final round of the 2007 Presidential elections in France. The two candidates were Nicholas Sarkozy from the UMP party and Segolene Royal of the Socialist party. I had heard the election summarized as, "There is no good choice because Sarkozy is a fascist and Royal is incompetent!" Sarkozy had said some interesting things and Royal had big dreams of what the state could do for the people but no way to make it happen. A large portion of the French population was undecided until really late in the campaigns.


At school on Friday, one of the students from Canada was talking about the upcoming election and said, "You should get out of France for the weekend! (mind you, it was a long weekend as well) If Sarkozy is elected, there are going to be all kinds of riots! ..." We all kind of laughed at him saying, "even if there are demonstrations, it'll be fine! Don't worry!"

So Sunday night: I was a few blocks away at my friend Madison's house working on a paper and left at about 10:30. It was announced around 9 that Sarkozy had won with 53% of the vote. I was walking back home and was on the phone with Eric. Everything was fine and dandy and I had forgotten to expect any kind of response to the election. Then I turned the corner by the tram stop next to my house... I didn't see any angry rioters but they must not have been far because during the second half of my walk, I saw at least 4 groups of 15 policemen dressed in full garb! They had black helmets, body shields, and BIG guns, and were patrolling the streets like an army! It was scary! Eric was getting worried too because I had kind of stopped talking to him as I tried to figure out what was going on and home to get home safely. I finally get into my building after following one of the groups of policemen down my street. My host sister was home and was kind of freaking out about it too. We watched from our window as a few more groups of policemen and 3-4 fire trucks came down our streets. It was quite the rush! There was not any damage done to our streets but in the Grenoble area that night, around 45 cars were burned and in all of France, there were over 750 cars burned and almost 600 people arrested! All because people were not happy that Sarkozy was voted to be president!

It was quite an experience! Perhaps I'll rethink taking that "Politics in France" course next semester... It could be interesting to see what happens!