Saturday, 24 December 2011By Nihal Cizmecioglu (JTW)
JTW conducted an exclusive interview with Maxime Gauin on the current debate about the bill prohibiting the denial of genocide.
Nihal Çizmecioglu: Sarkozy had blocked a similar law from going to the Senate from 2007 to 2010. What has changed since then?
Maxime Gauin: The thing that has changed is the perspective of the presidential election. The right was defeated in the Senate. It was the first time since 1968, and even before 1968, there was an anti-Gaullist coalition, from the communists to some of the center-right, led by the liberal Gaston Monnerville, and not a purely left-wing majority. This defeat showed the exasperation of many traditional center-right notabilities, who preferred to vote for socialist or liberal candidates instead of Nicolas Sarkozy’s party. It was especially clear in several rural counties. It is also quite possible that people like Patrick Devedjian played a role in this change.
More generally, you have to remind that Mr. Sarkozy is accustomed to quick changes of position, and without any strong apparent reason.
Nihal Çizmecioglu: Why is Sarkozy afraid of losing the presidential election? Is it because his image dimmed next to Merkel’s?
Maxime Gauin: Mr. Sarkozy’s party has lost the municipal and cantonal elections of 2008, the regional elections of 2010, and the cantonal and senatorial elections of 2011. There is increasing discontent, which started as early as the end of 2007, and actually never did dissipate. No other President of the Fifth Republic, i.e. since 1958 (before 1958, the President of France had a role of arbiter), was so unpopular during his first mandate. The reasons are numerous. In short, you can say that Mr. Sarkozy was never considered a good representative of our Republic because of his non-presidential style; that his achievements in solving the economic and social difficulties (even before the crisis of Fall 2008) are considered insufficient and frequently totally counter-productive and unjust (for example, the lowering of income tax for the wealthiest people, partially overruled in 2011); and that the accumulation of scandals since October 2009 (misuse of public money, Bettencourt affair, Karachi affair, etc.) were a kind of catalyst for the public’s exasperation.
Of course, the image he obtained recently with Ms. Merkel has something to do with his concerns. A loss of the AAA credit rating by France may soon be another important problem.
Nihal Çizmecioglu: You say in your op-ed that the bill is neither the result of Armenian nationalists’ influence nor the expression of a wave of anti-Turkish, anti-Islam sentiment. But Erdogan said that Sarkozy aimed at winning the election through Turkish and Muslim hostility. How do you interpret his words?
Maxime Gauin: There is no contradiction. The collapse of Armenian activism in France since 2007 is obvious. They have lost, without hope, any capacity to organize important demonstrations. Their demonstrations in front of the Senate in 2008 and 2009 were pitiful failures. One of their staunch supporters in Parliament, François Rochebloine (center-right) lost—in rather humiliating conditions—his seat of cantonal counselor in March 2011, and will possibly lose his seat of MP the next year.
It is quite possible, as Mr. Erdogan asserts that Mr. Sarkozy wants to win the election through Turkish and Muslim hostility, but in this case, Mr. Sarkozy is making a miscalculation. He seduced a part of the National Front’s voters in 2007, and that is one of the main reasons of his success indeed. But he did not seduce them with a specifically anti-Muslim, still less anti-Turkish, speech. It was rather with harsh promises about immigrants in general, the fight against criminality, and more generally the promise to change fundamentally political practices after a Chirac presidency which was perceived as bad for public morality (as you know probably, Mr. Chirac was recently sentenced to two years of jail, suspended because of his age and illness, for embezzlement). These far-rightist voters feel mostly disappointed, if not betrayed, but Mr. Sarkozy is wrong in believing that an anti-Muslim or anti-Turkish stance can attract them. Most of them are indifferent to that. Of course, they do not like the Turks and Islam (in general), but what they want are concrete results: the reduction of the number of immigrants and the crushing of criminal gangs.
In addition, whatever you think about the radical rightists in France, they are more coherent than Mr. Sarkozy: Most of them wish the liberty of expression be expanded, especially to speak about “those who are not like us” (immigrants). They can hardly advocate a limitation of free speech about a historical event which happened almost one century ago in a foreign country.
Nihal Çizmecioglu: Lastly, only about 70 MPs out of 577 participated in the General Assembly session. How do you interpret the majority of deputies being indifferent toward the subject?
Maxime Gauin: It seems to me rather simple. Most of the deputies are not favorable to Ms. Boyer’s bill, but they do not dare express their opinion—the UMP because Mr. Sarkozy is behind this proposition of law; the socialists because they believe wrongly that the Armenian nationalists are still dangerous during the national elections. An additional, secondary reason is that the vote took place only two days before the Eve of Christmas.
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Saturday, 24 December 2011
Nihal Cizmecioglu, JTW
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