I Sego for it girl.
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I know that I am going 50% off my focus of writing posts about travel in Europe but at least it is about France. Arnold of Foreign Perspectives, who now lives in France, told me that a French website was looking for posts about the forthcoming French Presidential elections from an outsider’s angle. I thought sounds interesting, could get my blog some publicity and there are 30 prizes of podcasts. So below is my offering. I just hope that the French will appreciate my sense of humour.
The forthcoming French Presidential elections have not whipped up great interest public interest in the UK. The Presidential elections raise a couple of interesting points for me personally, feminism and the internet, both connected to the socialist candidate, Segolene Royal, nicknamed Sego.
Firstly does France really hanker for it’s first female president? It
would be seen as a breakthrough in the rather macho world of French
politics where only 12% of deputies are female. Royal’s popularity
soared after a former male rival, posed the question, “Who will look
after the children?”, when it became clear that Royal was a serious
contender in the elections. I had to laugh at the press coverage given
to Royal’s choice of high heeled shoes during a visit to the slums of
Chile. There always seems to be such scrutiny of the way female
politicians dress and look in comparision to male politicians’
attire and appearance. A woman can’t win, she will either be criticised
as frumpy, or if well turned out, as having paid too much attention to
her appearance. Some say that Royal looks better now than she did 20 years ago in her early
30s, photos show her looking a bit dowdy, her face swamped behind large
glasses and hair scrapped back from her face. As Royal has quipped, ”
Why should you have to be boring and ugly to succeed in politics?”
Then there were the photos of Royal in her bikini, I say a great figure
for a 50+ mother of four. Royal has been is in a long tern relationship
with Francois Hollande, the chairman of the French socialist party.
Hollande is credited with converting the Catholic Conservative Royal to
Socialism. Royal is sticking to her feminist ideals by remaining
unmarried, or is she really a Catholic rebel? You could also say that
her rise to prominence has overshadowed her partner’s career, a touch
of “A Star in Born”? Earlier this year one of her advisors was
relieved of duties after saying that Hollande was the only defect in
Royal’s campaign. Royal has also been slated for her lack of substance
and policies which leads me to the next point, her use of the internet.
According to Le Monde, 27 million French use the internet every day and
40% say that the internet is their main source of political
information. Postings on political blogs often receive between 400 -
500 comments. Royal has been an exponent of participative democracy in
her “Desires for the Future” where she encourages citizens to submit
ideas on the how the country should be run to local committees or her
website. These 150 committees are encouraged to start their own blogs.
Interestingly her youth website Segosphere is run by her eldest son, a
bit of nepotism in the brave new world? Royal claims to be harnessing
the collective intelligence and it is the first time that public input
has been used to design a manifesto. Royal believes in citizens
providing bottom up solutions rather then politicians imposing top down
solutions. She claims to base her policies on the realities of peoples’
lives. Critics scorn her approach as populist, which they use in the
negative sense of indulging the whims of the electorate in a superficial
manner. However another definition of populist is the advocation of
democratic principles which is surely a laudable aim.
I say that the proof of the (Sego) pudding will be in the eating. If
Royal is elected, will she to continue to be an exponent of participative
democracy which entails talking and listening to citizens at all times,
not merely during elections? She talks of initiatives such as randomly selected citizens’
juries to monitor Government policy. However monitor does not necessarily mean influence. Will her grass roots policies, encompassed in her 100 proposals, be achievable in the real world?
March 15th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
My article has been publised on the France 24 Observer site:
http://observer.france24.com/index.php?2007/03/07/11-i-sego-for-it-girl
April 27th, 2007 at 11:50 am
[...] I received my Podcast Factory from the France 24 TV news channel, my prize for commenting on the French Presidential elections. Now it claims on the box that “your voice on the internet in minutes”. This was deja vu as I’d read this when trying to install Google Adsense and integrate the Wordpress blog into my site. Well that may be the case for the IT and techically literate but we mere mortals need to call on expert assistance, which in my case, is an SOS to our son Gary. He’s coming on Monday to get me up and running. [...]
June 19th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I read today that Sego has announced her separation from Francois Holland, her long tern partner accusing him of having an affair:
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=957972007