President Chirac | SabrangIndia News Related to Human Rights Wed, 17 May 2017 10:33:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://sabrangindia.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Favicon_0.png President Chirac | SabrangIndia 32 32 “You can’t fight fascism every five years with a piece of paper” https://sabrangindia.in/you-cant-fight-fascism-every-five-years-piece-paper/ Wed, 17 May 2017 10:33:17 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2017/05/17/you-cant-fight-fascism-every-five-years-piece-paper/ Abstention in the recent French presidential elections was at its highest since 1969. Macron cannot afford to ignore those who abstained, as much as he cannot ignore those who voted for Le Pen.   Emmanuel Macron. Liewig Christian/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved. At 8pm local time on Sunday 7 May, it was confirmed: Emmanuel Macron, […]

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Abstention in the recent French presidential elections was at its highest since 1969. Macron cannot afford to ignore those who abstained, as much as he cannot ignore those who voted for Le Pen.
 
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Emmanuel Macron. Liewig Christian/ABACA/ABACA/PA Images. All rights reserved.

At 8pm local time on Sunday 7 May, it was confirmed: Emmanuel Macron, leader of the year-old movement En marche! (Onward!) won the French presidential election with 66.1% of the vote, defeating Marine Le Pen, of the far-right Front National (FN). A collective sigh of relief passed through France, Europe and across the world.

But this election has been historic for several reasons – beating a far-right populist is only one of many. The two main governing parties in the fifth republic – the Socialist Party and centre-right Republican Party – were knocked out in the first round; it is the first time since 1969 that participation in the first round was higher than that of the second round (77.7% and 74.6% respectively); and, at 25.44%, the rate of abstention is at its highest since 1969.

25.44% amounts to around 12 million people, with a further 4.2 million who spoiled their ballot. Although the lowest turnout was registered in the French overseas territories and Corsica, the phenomenon was observed throughout the country.

An open-air abstention meet-up

On election day, under a gloomy purple-grey sky, I joined a group of around 40 people gathered at the Parc de la Villette, in the north-east of Paris.

With only a few more hours left to vote, this crowd was not rushing to the polling stations: the gathering, with the Facebook event title of “So what do we do now?”, was set up to encourage those who had chosen to abstain or spoil their ballots to come together and discuss what the future held. Most of the attendees were far-left activists, anti-fascists, some were supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the candidate from the far-left La France Insoumise movement (roughly translating to "France Unbowed"), and others were members of the anarchist Black Bloc group.

Despite tension surrounding the elections, here the atmosphere was relaxed. A subversive version of a coconut shy stall was set up in one corner (ironically dubbed the “Game of the FN”) where participants won (or lost) points by knocking over cardboard boxes with the protagonists of this year’s election, including Le Pen (with “fascist hyena” scribbled under her photo), François Fillon (the candidate of the Republican party, and plagued by a corruption scandal), and of course Macron.

One of the older participants, with particularly good aim, managed to knock over the Le Pen box on his first shot, armed with a football. Amidst cheers, he chuckled: “it’s by kicking them that you get the fascists!”.

“Ni Le Pen, Ni Macron!”

Marius, a 25-year-old who lives and works in Marseille, came to Paris to participate in the gathering and the anti-capitalist protests. He told me that the first time he voted was in the presidential elections in 2012. Since then, he voted in the first round of the 2012 legislative elections but didn’t vote in the second round.

“I have since chosen not to vote,” he told me. “The 2012 presidential campaign was a struggle for me. We were encouraged to vote against Sarkozy, which I did, and it really annoyed me because I knew that Hollande would employ liberal [economic] policies.”

While Marius and his friends discussed their discontent with Hollande’s presidency, a Boycott 2017 activist – a group advocating for abstention or ballot spoiling – handed out leaflets branded with the now-popular slogan “Ni Le Pen, Ni Macron!” (“Neither Le Pen, nor Macron!”).

The leaflet begins: “When faced with the plague [Le Pen], the near unanimity of politicians give the order to vote for cholera [Macron], it’s the famous Front républicain.” It’s a succinct summary of the debate that raged amongst left-wing voters and politicians in the days leading up to the elections. It lists the initiatives and laws they had to “fight against”, including the “damned” loi Macron (Macron Law) and the loi travail (Law on Work), both of which attempted to reform the country’s economy and labour laws.

The former was drafted by him during his time as Hollande’s minister of the economy (from August 2014 to August 2016) and the latter was heavily influenced by his policies. The incumbent president is leaving office with a low approval rating – only 4% of the population are satisfied with his presidency, according to a poll published in October 2016. Macron has worked hard to dissociate himself from his predecessor’s record, but Hollande’s shadow will loom over him.

The Boycott 2017 leaflet finishes with “all the governments of the previous years have set the scene for the FN”. It cites the 2002 election which saw Jean-Marie Le Pen (Marine’s father), then-candidate of the FN, crushed by Jacques Chirac, the right-wing candidate of the Union pour un movement populaire(UMP, now les Républicains), with 82.2%. “As we can see the strategy of forming a barrage against fascism in the ballot box is not efficient against the FN which continues to gain ground,” it notes. Boycott 2017 concludes that “the only real strategy is the boycott of the elections.” As evidenced by the 25.44% abstention rate on Sunday, they were not alone in thinking that.


Anti-Marine Le Pen posters, by Canal Saint Martin. Credit: Bérengère Sim. All rights reserved.

In stark contrast to the 2002 election, when the shock of the FN’s presence in the second round and the fear of the party mobilised politicians and citizens to call for a strategic vote for Chirac, many have put Le Pen and Macron’s policies on a par. Phrases like “I will not choose between neoliberalism and lepenism” or “neither extreme right nor extreme finance” have echoed across social media and in gatherings, pointing to the banalisation of the FN’s far-right policies paired with the rejection of the current system, which many believe Macron embodies.

Mélenchon, who in 2002 immediately called on his supporters to vote for Chirac to block the far-right, refused to call on his voters to turn to Macron after the first round of the 2017 elections, perhaps implicitly encouraging his supporters to abstain or spoil their ballot – an “irresponsible” position, according to the socialist Julien Dray.

As promised at the beginning of Mélenchon’s movement, La France Insoumise, a consultation was organised so that “les insoumis” (the unbowed – Mélenchon’s supporters) could express their voting intentions for the second round. The majority, 36.12%, planned on spoiling their ballot; 34.83% announced they would vote for Macron; 29.05% claimed they would abstain.

Op-eds mushroomed in an attempt to convince those planning to abstain or spoil their ballots: José Bové, a French Green Party member of the European Parliament, exclaimed “I call, without any constraints, to vote for Macron” in the leftist French daily Libération; the writer Raphaël Glucksmann wrote a “Letter to a friend who refuses to choose”; with a few cross-Channel articles featuring in the mix, such as Hadley Freeman’s piece in The Guardian: “Le Pen is a far-right holocaust revisionist. Macron isn’t. Hard choice?”. Several abstentionists at the Villette were looking with disdain at Libération’s front page on the weekend of the vote: “DO WHAT YOU WANT BUT VOTE FOR MACRON”, with an article by Laurent Joffrin, director of the newspaper, titled “We do not just vote for ourselves”.

Marius admitted to me that he had felt pressure to vote: “the real question for me was whether or not, in the 2017 elections, I would be able to resist the pressure from my friends who wanted me to vote for their preferred candidate.” In France, during ‘civic education’ classes in middle school, children are taught that “voting is a right, and it is also a civic duty” (“voter est un droit, c’est aussi un devoir civique”), a phrase that is printed at the top of all electoral cards stamped at polling stations. During this class, teachers explain that voting is considered a moral obligation and the exercising of one’s right to elect their representatives. As a result, abstention is, to a certain extent, considered a dirty word.

The 25.44% that Macron cannot ignore

Did the numerous articles and the endorsements of Macron from politicians and public figures in France and abroad help? That’s difficult to say.

The president-elect will have to choose a prime minister; the legislative elections, with the first and second round being held on 11 and 18 June respectively, will determine whether he will govern with a majority or not.

Macron is inheriting a divided society. Given the many records broken in this presidential election, he cannot afford to ignore those who abstained as much as he cannot ignore those who voted for the FN.

During his speech at the Louvre, addressing his supporters after his victory, Macron acknowledged those who voted for him unenthusiastically, without adhering to his ideas or his programme, “to defend the republic”. He declared: “I understand that this does not mean I will have free rein.” He then turned to those who voted for the FN: “they expressed an anger, a desperation, and sometimes convictions. I respect them but I will do everything to make sure you never have reason again to vote for extremes again.”

Those who abstained or spoiled their ballots were absent from his speech.

As more people joined the crowd in the Villette, Marius clarified his position to me. “All those people who are shouting at me saying that because [I abstained], Le Pen will get 40% in this election, I say to them: I don’t care. I am involved in anti-fascist movements; I advocate for local issues where I live. For me, voting isn’t the most important act.”

One of his friends – a fellow abstentionist – nodded away enthusiastically. She added: “anyway, you can’t fight fascism every five years with a piece of paper.”

This article was first published on openDemocracy.net.

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Cracks within https://sabrangindia.in/cracks-within/ Fri, 28 Feb 2003 18:30:00 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2003/02/28/cracks-within/ Statistically insignificant they may be, but the resignations of a few politicians and diplomats in the US, UK and Australia puncture more holes in the dubious claims of the warmongers Why I had to leave the cabinet ROBIN COOK March 19, 2003 I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental principle […]

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Statistically insignificant they may be, but the resignations of a few politicians and diplomats in the US, UK and Australia puncture more holes in the dubious claims of the warmongers

Why I had to leave the cabinet

ROBIN COOK

March 19, 2003

I have resigned from the cabinet because I believe that a fundamental principle of Labour’s foreign policy has been violated. If we believe in an international community based on binding rules and institutions, we cannot simply set them aside when they produce results that are inconvenient to us.

I cannot defend a war with neither international agreement nor domestic support. I applaud the determined efforts of the prime minister and foreign secretary to secure a second resolution. Now that those attempts have ended in failure, we cannot pretend that getting a second resolution was of no importance.

In recent days, France has been at the receiving end of the most vitriolic criticism. However, it is not France alone that wants more time for inspections. Germany is opposed to us. Russia is opposed to us. Indeed, at no time have we signed up even the minimum majority to carry a second resolution. We delude ourselves about the degree of international hostility to military action if we imagine that it is all the fault of President Chirac.

The harsh reality is that Britain is being asked to embark on a war without agreement in any of the international bodies of which we are a leading member. Not NATO. Not the EU. And now not the Security Council.

To end up in such diplomatic isolation is a serious reverse. Only a year ago we and the US were part of a coalition against terrorism which was wider and more diverse than I would previously have thought possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition.

Britain is not a superpower. Our interests are best protected, not by unilateral action, but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet, tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened. The European Union is divided. The Security Council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of war without a single shot yet being fired.

The threshold for war should always be high. None of us can predict the death toll of civilians in the forthcoming bombardment of Iraq. But the US warning of a bombing campaign that will "shock and awe" makes it likely that casualties will be numbered at the very least in the thousands. Iraq’s military strength is now less than half its size than at the time of the last Gulf war. Ironically, it is only because Iraq’s military forces are so weak that we can even contemplate invasion. And some claim his forces are so weak, so demoralised and so badly equipped that the war will be over in days.

We cannot base our military strategy on the basis that Saddam is weak and at the same time justify pre-emptive action on the claim that he is a serious threat. Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of that term — namely, a credible device capable of being delivered against strategic city targets. It probably does still have biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions. But it has had them since the Eighties when the US sold Saddam the anthrax agents and the then British government built his chemical and munitions factories.

Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years and which we helped to create? And why is it necessary to resort to war this week while Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is frustrated by the presence of UN inspectors?

I have heard it said that Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to disarm, and our patience is exhausted. Yet, it is over 30 years since Resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.

We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply. What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops to action in Iraq.

I believe the prevailing mood of the British public is sound. They do not doubt that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator. But they are not persuaded he is a clear and present danger to Britain. They want the inspections to be given a chance. And they are suspicious that they are being pushed hurriedly into conflict by a US administration with an agenda of its own. Above all, they are uneasy at Britain taking part in a military adventure without a broader international coalition and against the hostility of many of our traditional allies. It has been a favourite theme of commentators that the House of Commons has lost its central role in British politics. Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for Parliament to stop the commitment of British troops to a war that has neither international authority nor domestic support.

(The Guardian, UK)
(The writer is a former British foreign secretary and till March 17 was the leader 
of the House of Commons)

Anti-war official rocks Australian govt.

BOB BURTON

March 12, 2003

CANBERRA:The Australian government has been stunned by the resignation of one of its senior intelligence analysts who argues that, based on US and other intelligence information he has seen, there is currently no justification for a war on Iraq.

"I’m convinced a war against Iraq at this time would be wrong. For a start, Iraq does not pose a security threat to the US, or to the UK or Australia, or to any other country, at this point in time," former Office of National Assessments intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie said, announcing his resignation late on Wednesday evening.

"I just don’t believe that a war at this time would be worth the risk,’’ he said.

A critical factor behind Wilkie’s resignation was claims made by US secretary of state Colin Powell to the UN Security Council purporting that a link exists between Al Qaeda and Iraq. "As far as I’m aware there was no hard evidence and there is still no hard evidence that there is any active co-operation between Iraq and Al Qaeda,’’ Wilkie told Australia Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) television.

Three years ago, Wilkie, a 41-year-old career military officer, was seconded to the Office of National Assessments, which prepares briefings for the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet from a wide range of intelligence sources.

Wilkie has worked on global terrorism and transnational issues including Afghanistan and the likely humanitarian consequences of a war on Iraq.

Wilkie describes his resignation as the "biggest decision I think I’ve ever made in my life’’ but felt compelled to act by what he thought is the prospect of a high risk of humanitarian crisis from any US-led attack on Iraq.

"I don’t believe I could stand by any longer and take no action as this coalition marches to war. I think the interests of the thousands of people, perhaps tens or even more, tens of thousands of people or even more who could be injured, displaced or killed in a war, I think their interests are more important,’’ he said.

The director general of the Office of National Assessments, Kim Jones, sought to downplay the significance of Wilkie’s resignation. "The officer concerned was a member of our transnational issues branch. He normally worked on illegal immigration issues. The transnational issues branch does not deal with issues related to Iraq,’’ Jones said, reading from a statement.

Speaking to journalists in Jakarta late Wednesday evening, minister of foreign affairs Alexander Downer, also sought to dismiss Wilkie’s resignation. "Mr Wilkie has come to the view that he doesn’t support the Australian government’s policy, and I think in those circumstances he’s done the honourable thing and resigned.’’

As one of the few ex-military officers that work at the Office of National Assessments, Wilkie was identified as one of the people who would work in the national intelligence watch office if a war in Iraq eventuated. In preparation for that role he had access to all intelligence information flowing into the agency on the topic.

Only hours before Wilkie’s resignation, Prime Minister John Howard sought to justify Australia’s support for the US war on Iraq on the basis of countering groups like Al Qaeda.

"To me, the ultimate nightmare of the modern world is that chemical and biological weapons will get into the hands of terrorists, and believe me, they will use them. They will not care about the cost (of what) they do to the countries against, or the peoples against which they are used,’’ Howard said in Sydney.

Wilkie believes that a war on Iraq may well turn out to be counter-productive. "In fact, a war is the exact course of action most likely to cause Saddam to do exactly what we’re trying to prevent. I believe it’s the course of action that is most likely to cause him to lash out recklessly, to use weapons of mass destruction and to possibly play a terrorism card,’’ he said.

Wilkie hopes that his actions will force Howard to rethink its unquestioning support for a unilateral strike against Iraq. "If my action today and over the next couple of days, can make the Australian government rethink its position, and maybe take a more sensible approach to developing its policy on Iraq, I think it’s been worthwhile,’’ he said.

In the wake of mass rallies in mid-February in which well over half a million citizens publicly demonstrated against the war, Wilkie’s resignation has demonstrated the depth of concern amongst the normally conservative ranks of the intelligence and foreign affairs establishment.

Former Office of National Assessments analyst and now the head of the Global Terrorism Center at Monash University, David Wright Neville, believes there is great concern about Howard’s policy in intelligence and military circles.

’’Speaking to former colleagues, former contacts both in the Office of National Assessments and other elements of the intelligence community, (there) are widespread concerns that are similar to Andrew’s about the direction in which the government is taking us,’’ he said.

With opposition to Australia’s deployment of 2,000 personnel to the Middle East growing, opposition political parties and the peace movement sense that Howard is now becoming electorally very vulnerable.

An opinion poll commissioned by the public relations company that works for the Labour Party and released on Wednesday revealed that 59 per cent of Australians oppose a unilateral attack on Iraq. However, a UN-endorsed attack was supported by 64 per cent of the 1,000 people surveyed.

According to opposition foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, Wilkie’s resignation ‘’torpedoes the credibility’’ of Howard. (Courtesy: IPS)

Second US diplomat resigns

March 10, 2003

A veteran US diplomat resigned today in protest over US policy toward Iraq, becoming the second career foreign service officer to do so in the past month.

John Brown, who joined the State Department in 1981, said he resigned because he could not support Washington’s Iraq policy, which he said was fomenting a massive rise in anti-US sentiment around the world.

In a resignation letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Brown said he agreed with J Brady Kiesling, a diplomat at the US embassy in Athens who quit in February over President George W Bush’s apparent intent on fighting Iraq.

"I am joining my colleague John Brady Kiesling in submitting my resignation from the Foreign Service — effective immediately — because I cannot in good conscience support President Bush’s war plans against Iraq," he said.

"Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force," Brown said in the letter, a copy of which he sent to AFP.

"The president’s disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century," he said.

"I joined the Foreign Service because I love our country," Brown said. "Respectfully, Mr Secretary, I am now bringing this calling to a close, with a heavy heart but for the same reason that I embraced it."

Two senior State Department officials confirmed that Powell had received the letter from Brown, who had served at the US embassies in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and Moscow before being assigned to be a diplomat-in-residence at Georgetown University in Washington. n

(Wire Services) (http://www.unitedforpeace.org)

Archived from Communalism Combat, March 2003 Year 9  No. 85, Cover Story 11

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