Quick break from work...
11/07/2024
08/07/2024
Post-election reflections...
France saved its republic from the shame of joining the European countries led by the far right, but it is now deeply divided, and its Parliament without a clear leadership. The near future is still uncertain.
By Melissa Chemam
The first feeling was relief… For most of us, French democrats, for the dual nationals, and for the millions of expats living here.
Voting in Marseille in the morning yesterday, Gaëlle, 38 years old, told me it was important for her to vote because she is “not in agreement with the values of the National Rally”.
“I wanted to express my political voice as a left-wing person, who wants a mixed France, proud of all the people who live here and who participate in life in society. A tolerant and loving France.”
For those living in Marseille, one of the most multicultural cities in France, considered as the “gateway to the global south” by many, including some directors of its leading cultural institution, it’s not a surprising stance.
But Marseille, unlike Paris, wakes up on Monday (8 July 2024) as a deeply divided city; its western districts now represented by the left; a surge of the far right on the eastern, richer parts.
The New Popular Front surprisingly came out first on Sunday night’s results, after two weeks of tense campaigning, and constant obsession about the far right on 24-hour news channels.
But the group are in a difficult position now, as President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly said he would not want to work with them to form a government.
“We have to completely change our method, and the left must present within the week a candidacy for the post of Prime Minister after the second round of the legislative elections,” the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure, said on FranceInfo on Monday morning, 8 July.
Macron’s current Prime Minister and special protégé, Gabriel Attal, announced on Sunday evening that he would submit his resignation to Emmanuel Macron on Monday morning, but added that he would be keen to stay “as long as duty requires”.
The presidential palace announced a few minutes later that Macron would wait to know the exact "structuring" of the new Assembly before choosing the people invited to join the government.
Politicians like François Bayrou, a centrist who heads a party allied to Macron, has floated the idea of an alliance excluding what he keeps calling “the extreme left” and extreme right, gathering together a “democratic and republican” grouping which would govern together.
But for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of left-wing party France Insoumise (LFI, or Unsubmissive France), Macron "has the duty to call on the New Popular Front to govern”.
With this type of deadlock, and the rise of the far right - the RN being now the third political force in parliament - an unseen situation in France, many have reasons to keep on worrying, especially foreigners living in France and French people living abroad, with family spread over two countries if not continents.
"I spent the evening on the phone with the family,” my French Tunisian friend Nadia wrote to me. “What a relief indeed. I find that we feel it in the atmosphere of the city too…” she said of Marseille.
In Bruxelles, Sandra, a friend of mine who is French Greek and moved to Belgium twenty years ago, even joked that she will probably agree to come back and visit us again in France…
From New York, Farah, another French Tunisian friend of mine, who campaigned for two weeks for the New Popular Front, said she cried of relief.
In Paris, where the left is quite high, most of my British and American friends who have been living in France now want to get their French nationality as soon as possible, a right they have now that they have lived here for decades, having children born in France and French spouses.
What is sure is that France probably has another year of turmoil in front of her. The French Republic’s constitution is heavily tilted in favour of the executive, giving more power to its President and Prime Minister. To rebalance the system in favour of such a hung parliament will demand a lot of flexibility and creativity from MPs and members of a potential coalition government.
It could be a blessing, teaching the French how to live and run a country through compromises and tolerance, and stop relying on the providential strong male leader. But the road to that goal might not be the straightest line…
07/07/2024
French elections 2024: Second round in Marseille
French voters had to face a snap election, called after the European polls.
Here are a few words from a city hall employee on organisation, in Marseille, on Sunday 7 July 2024:
06/07/2024
End of the UK / Rwanda migrant deal
UK's new PM Keir Starmer kills Rwanda plan on first day
July 5 (Reuters) - Britain's newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer has killed off a deportation plan that would see migrants who arrived in the UK illegally sent to Rwanda on his first day on the job, the Telegraph reported on Friday, citing Labour sources, calling the plan "effectively dead."
Starmer had earlier promised to scrap the Conservative's policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, but with migration a key electoral issue, he will be under pressure himself to find a way to stop tens of thousands of people arriving across the Channel from France on small boats.
05/07/2024
French actor and author Nicolas Lambert brings his timely anti-colonial stance to Avignon
LA FRANCE, EMPIRE
After the Theatre de Belleville in Paris, the 11 • Avignon venue in the French southern capital of the theatre world hosts 'France, Empire', written and performed by Nicolas Lambert, a writer who uses his past experiences as a journalist and documentary maker to explore the darker part of French history.
Nicolas Lambert is an actor and an author but he is first and foremost a storyteller, who acts as a history teacher for his daughter, especially in this play where he performs all the roles himself, including impersonation of Charles de Gaulle, General Leclerc and most of the presidents of the last two French republics.
While his trilogy The A-Democracy devoted his expertise to the business of oil, nuclear power and armaments, France, Empire is part of his 'Theatre of Operations' series.
From the disintegration of its Picardy to the Second World War and the dismantling of the French Empire, he links common and personal history, including infamous political speeches and testimonies from overseas, until some masks fall.
The play is on during Avignon Off until 21 July 2024, at Theatre 11 • Avignon.
"I wanted to have testimony on that part of France's history," Lambert told RFI English, "and I wanted to give testimony that was not one of guilt. Because, as our former President of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, says so well, 'children are not responsible for their father's policies, for their father's crimes', as he said in his infamous Dakar speech."
'A family secret'
Lambert uses his family history in the north of France to retrace the different parts of the imperial, colonial history. And one day, he realised his own daughter didn't know anything about colonial history.
"By the end of third grade, my daughter had never heard of the years of the old French empire," Lambert told RFI English.
"She didn't know that Morocco was part of France, that Tunisia was part of it, or Cameroon, etc. Or that all her friends came from places like these used to be the French Empire. More French people should know and not only through school programmes, but through exhibitions, debates, museums, theatres..."
He presents that part of colonial history and its traumas around the notion of family secret, a metaphor to explain why the subject is so often avoided in France, while knowledge and conversation, according to me, should help.
"There is a lot of emotion in the room during the show," he added. "We can sometimes have somewhat typical audiences who come, but mostly we have a lot of psychologists, who work on the notion of trauma, who come, and that touches me a lot. It seems like a good, good tool for them, to discuss these issues individually but also collectively. Some people cry too, it frees something."
Enduring empire
From Algeria to Vietnam, including the Americas, Subsaharan Africa and the current overseas territories in the Caribbean sea, the Indian and the Pacific oceans, like Mayotte and New Caledonia, the show opens a thread that unites all the territories controlled at some point in history by Paris – a form of gigantic empire, that is still resisting.
Lambert says that in the current political context, the rise of racism, and the denial of past violence in the global south, his text only seems more relevant to him.
The author-actor is now plotting to turn the show into a film, later this year.
To a new UK
So happy for my friends in the United Kingdom !
From Belfast to Bristol via London and Lancashire, I love you and I hope you'll really get your country back this time!
NB. This graph is from early exit poll results. We know now that the Green Party has 4 MPs in the new Parliament.
04/07/2024
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