French presidential weekly: the election turns barking mad

Having witnessed voting dogs and pre-scripted debates, one may have been forgiven for believing that this election had reached its comedic apogee.

When moaning about the divisions felt throughout his beloved France, Charles de Gaulle once famously stated: “how would you like to govern a country with 246 different kinds of cheese?” Trying to emulate the patriotic spirit of the General, presidential candidate for the Republicans party, Valerie Pécresse, replicated De Gaulle’s wisecrack in front of her audience in Nice. Much to her dismay, the joke fell on deaf ears.

The deafening silence of the crowd should come as no surprise, however, following the revelations of electoral fraud by French newspaper Libération. Indeed, an investigation into the party’s 148,000-member electoral list found that at least four deceased people had voted in the Republicans’ primary election. Madame Pécresse was left blushing by one particular voter, however. Having never participated in any party meetings, campaigned, or even commented on social media, many wondered whether Douglas was taking his role as a party activist seriously enough. Well, it turned out that Douglas… was a dog. Having raised suspicion, Libération contacted Douglas’ owner who confirmed that he had signed his dog up with his own contact details and voted to “see if it were possible”.

Probing further into the accusations of fraud, the paper found that there had been many examples of voters of immigrant-background, with little to no knowledge of Valerie Pécresse and her party, being told to sign up and vote by friends or colleagues.

Before you could say Scooby-Doo, Madame Pécresse and her party were being hounded on social media with the hashtag ‘DouglasGate’. The most notable person to get in on the memeing was presidential rival Eric Zemmour who announced that his party Reconquer was now accepting all fury companions as members- albeit without the voting privileges.

The election’s worst kept secret was also finally revealed this week- Emmanuel Macron will seek his re-election. Many of our British readers will be wondering why the French president waited until the deadline day to announce his intention to run. The truth lies in French broadcasting laws. Indeed, until the former Rothschild banker officially declared his candidacy, communications regulators would not legally have to begin counting Macron’s minutes of television coverage towards his official allotted time during the election period. Coincidently, the once Socialist economic minister also chose the day of his campaign launch to announce the suspension of the French vaccine passport which had prohibited all those without their three doses from entering all public areas.

The French president equally tried to utilise the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine to boost his ratings through a rally around the flag effect. Having met with Vladimir Putin on several occasions, Emmanuel Macron returned to France asserting with confidence that he had dissuaded his Russian counterpart from military intervention. Henceforth, young Macronites had the audacity to print campaign posters claiming their leader’s words had averted war and forced Putin’s troops to retreat. The French president’s glory was to last a matter of days, however. When Russian troops entered Ukraine, Macron’s words were condemned to the same history chapter as Neville Chamberlain’s “peace of our time”. To add insult to injury, Macron’s authority was questioned by Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, who admitted that France’s membership of the EU and NATO rendered Macron a statesman with zero legitimacy to negotiate with Russia.

The French president’s clown performance had not reached its conclusion, however. Having twice turned down the opportunity to have his ideas scrutinised by fellow presidential candidates in a televised debate, Macron proclaimed that he was more interested in debating ‘with the French people directly’. His first campaign reunion in Poissy was thus the perfect opportunity to showcase his self-proclaimed ‘man of the people’ persona. Despite hours of unbearable media content salivating over the performance of their “under pressure” candidate, leaked images later revealed that whilst Macron’s audience members had been specially handpicked by his campaign team, every question asked had equally been pre-scripted. Outrage soon spilled onto social media as the hashtag “Macron takes us all for idiots” soon became the number one trending in France.

Having witnessed voting dogs and pre-scripted debates, one may have been forgiven for believing that this election had reached its comedic apogee. Nevertheless, the fool of the week award must be awarded to the appropriately-named Sandrine Rousseau for her outrageously woke comment at a reunion in Toulouse. Indeed, the former primary candidate for the French ecologist party left her audience stunned when she claimed that she was sick and tired of doing politics “amongst groups of the Ku Klux Klan”. Referring to the lack of diversity amongst her audience, the self-proclaimed Eco-feminist failed to find the irony in her comments. Indeed, I was rather bemused by Rousseau’s inability to understand that her bourgeois feminist ideology was unlikely to attract many of more religious and community-minded ethnic-minority backgrounds.

All in all, it seems that the circus will be in town until the 10th April when the French will head to the polls.