French National Assembly adopted a law which condemns the genocide of Armenians. This is what caused a French-Turkish outcry. As far as genocide in Armenia is concerned, where does this sudden French stick to principles come from? Isn’t it influenced by electoral campaign which is just in its initial phase?
Fight for the electorate
French political elite is put under pressure by Marine Le Pen’s high scores. The daughter of the founder of National Front debuts in presidential election and attains better poll results than her father. The current European Union’s crisis is a grist to the mill of the populist and xenophobic female candidate of the radical right – which is strong with the society’s poorer part’s anxieties.
An extremely fierce battle on the right will take place as far as workers’ electorate is concerned. On the occasion of various elections, National Front has been primarily chosen by workers from a couple of years. This trend was briefly reversed by Nicolas Sarkozy when he ran for presidential election in 2007. Thanks to his severe, anti-immigrant rhetoric he then managed to take over a large part of ‘folk electorate’.
Sarkozy’s gambit
Sarkozy dusted off project banning the attempts of denying genocide that has been temporarily put aside and a bit forgotten. His action was a premeditated gambit played in order to provoke a serious crisis in French-Turkish relations. By doing this, he intruded Le Pen’s area of political influence and totally checkmated his electoral competitors. Le Pen cannot criticize Sarkozy because the project suits perfectly well her anti-European and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The left is not in a position to protest too strongly for Sarkozy is just waiting to label them as naïve and unrealistic Europeans – just as he did 5 years ago. He would also point out that the fact that socialists do not exclude the possibility of giving their consent for Turkish accession to European Union and that they have let in France millions of immigrants without a sign of concern.
Selective principles
What favours the isolationist rhetoric of politicians are also the polls. According to the recent one, French pessimism as to the economic situation of France in the year 2012 has attained the highest level since 1978 and outnumbers the index of pessimism registered in Nigeria and Iraq.
Apparently, Sarkozy’s stick to principles is a selective one; France maintains close political and economic relationship with China without taking too much care of the violations of human rights in that country.
It is not only in Poland that other countries are used as political bludgeons in internal politics.
Translation: Katarzyna Laprus
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