French weekly magazines review 7 May 2017

Before a polling station opens in today's presidential decider, the magazines are already looking forward to the next big electoral bash, in June, when French voters will choose their new parliament.

DR

The questions are many: will the winner of today's poll manage to construct a workable majority in the National Assembly? Will the loser have sufficient impetus to forge an opposition coalition? How will Jean-Luc Mélenchon's strong showing in the presidential race translate into parliamentary seats? What about the conservative Les Républicains? Will they recover from the Fillon fiasco or simply break up around several unconvincing contenders for party leadership? And what about the Socialists, deeply divided, humiliated in this election, squeezed between a liberal centre and a suddenly triumphant hard left?

The only certainty is that the new line up in the National Assembly is going to look very different from the old one.

What options now for the mainstreal right?

Weekly magazine Le Point attempts to analyse the options facing the mainstream right. The first thing Les Républicans need is a new boss. The problem, says Le Point, is that there is no shortage of pretenders. The magazine cover features eight party luminaries, from the low-watt populist Laurent Wauquiez to the solid and serious Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.

But some of the other would-be conservative leaders are waiting to see if they get a call from the new president, with a view to participating in the next government. Which leaves them in a delicate position, to say the best of it. Those who haven't already put on their life jackets will have to construct a policy that is neither moderate xenophobia nor moderate socialism. And then pull the two wings of the right together.

As Le Point's analysis makes clear, the mainstream conservative movement in France is having its ideological space increasingly invaded by the far-right National Front, and seems incapable of defending its own heritage through a fear of appearing to be politically incorrect.

June is going to come very quickly for the survivors of the presidential shipwreck.

Crusty commentators suggest France is going down the tubes

Anyway, it's going to take more than a new president and a new-look National Assembly to save us.

The magazine L'Express gives the front-page honours to two crusty commentators, the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut and the former revolutionary Régis Debray, asking them to speculate on the future of France.

The news is not good.

The two old boys think that the political arena is now dominated by image and media impact at the expense of debate about real policies. We shouldn't expect to saved by those we elect.

The nation is being increasingly Americanised . . . in culture, language and in the primordial power of business. Worse, the American version of democracy is now presented as the global standard.

And then there is the threat posed by militant islam, active and dangerous in different ways in Mossul or Raqqa, and in the suburbs of Paris and Brussels. While we may have the military might to win the war against Islamic State in the Middle East, do we have the social vision to win the more crucial battle closer to home?

Finally, says Alain Finkielkraut, we may have more to fear from social disintegration than from religious extremism.

And the two lads end their joyful catalogue of potential disasters by looking at the dangerously unstable global geopolitical environment.

Hungry man jailed for stealing food

Satirical paper Le Canard Enchaîné meanwhile reports from the real world that a young Congolese illegal immigrant was recently sentenced to two weeks in jail for attempting to steal a packet of cakes and some sausages from a supermarket in Bordeaux. He was so hungry that he ripped open the packets and started to eat their contents in full view of the security staff who arrested him. That elevated the crime from simple theft to aggravated larceny involving the destruction of property.

The judge rejected the fact that the man was hungry as immaterial. But at least he had the humanity to reduce the charge to simple theft.

The total value of the goods stolen and maliciously destroyed was estimated at less than 10 euros.

Things are even worse than Finkielkraut and Debray suspect.