Ce weekend, sur la scène politique, ils seront trois candidats mâles

Sans aucune femme, évidemment. Dans les coulisses, d'ici peu, le chiffre 3 pourrait bien devenir 4 ou 5. Mais toujours pas le moindre signe d'une dame. La France serait-elle devenue totalement masculine sur le terrain présidentiel ? C'est ahurissant...

Lost enough already — no more time to lose

François Hollande has barely started his speech revealing that he won’t be seeking a second term in office. Removal people are already carting away his personal furniture and belongings. Click here to appreciate some well-done presidential humor.

Our suddenly-popular president

For a current president, there's no better way of gaining popularity than to announce that you'll be abandoning the job. That leaves the way open to both friends and enemies to say publicly that you were a nice fellow.

I wonder what would happen if he were to suddenly say: "Now that I see that more people admire me, I think I should change my mind and envisage a second term." If ever François Hollande were to adopt this approach, I think he should be careful. I'm not very experienced in the domain of presidential counseling.

I'm pleased to see that Bernard Cazeneuve has accepted the nice task of guiding both the nation and her chief to the end of an era. He's a courageous gentleman. Above all, he has been a faultless head cop, and he'll surely go down in modern French history for that. As for the outgoing president, I'm not convinced that history will store away a good image of his passage.

Plantu says goodbye

What exactly is that white object that the president is waving?

Is it a handkerchief... or maybe some kind of female garment?

The barrister's past-tense words are hard to understand:

"You know, he was a good fellow."
Good for whom?

Probably the next president of France

                                      [photo Albert Facelly pour Libération]

I can't see how François Fillon could possibly be beaten in the presidential course. His lead is enormous. From this point on, a new problem arises on the horizon. We must make sure that the extreme right-wing party, the Front National, sinks rapidly into oblivion.

Serious youthful Catholic, likes cars

#FillonPresident #Fillon2017

He’s a good-looking provincial fellow with a time-honored old French given name : François. He’s also a little “vieille France” (old France). It’s not hard to understand why the French—totally shocked by Islamic terrorists and Trump, fed up by Sarko and Copé, slightly irritated by the self-esteem of the older Juppé—find that Fillon is surely a simple man of qualities. That's what we need today : simplicity and human qualities.

photo Jean-Sébastien Evrard  / AFP

Lifeboats leaving a doomed ship

No !
We’re not boat people looking for a new land.
We’re simply abandoning a sinking ship.

In this political cartoon by Plantu, which appeared in L’Express, the captain of the red vessel is François Hollande, whose regard is directed constantly towards the heavens. The big ship in the foreground is a French Navy vessel, whose sailors are recognizable because of red pompons on their caps. The red vessel is about to crash into an iceberg whose summit has the same shape as Hollande's head. In the lifeboat, a tattered flag carries the rose symbol of Hollande’s Socialist party.

French ecology star fails in the primary

The French press views the defeat of Cécile Duflot as a big surprise.

The contenders Yannick Jadot and Michèle Rivasi emerged victorious from the primary.

Past can be better than future

                         [photo THOMAS SAMSON / AFP]

In an interview yesterday, Alain Juppé said that, in the legal domain, it can be preferable to have a past rather than a future. What a superb summary! When asked whether he might be thinking of anybody in particular, the candidate replied: “No, it’s a general remark.” That’s tact… but I’m still convinced Juppé was thinking of his principal right-wing opponent.

BREAKING NEWS: This morning, the candidate Bruno Le Maire thought he might be smart in jumping onto the bandwaggon. « C'est encore mieux de n'avoir ni passé ni avenir judiciaire. » (It's better still to have neither a judiciary past nor future.) Dull Bruno's remark reminded me of words from Forrest Gump. Of course, you silly bugger, we all know that it's better to have no problems whatsoever with the law. Le Maire was simply demonstrating (unnecessarily) that he doesn't cogitate as brilliantly as Juppé. His brain operates at least a notch or two below that of Juppé, both in speed and in intelligence.

Once they were friends

Click here to see how one of these two former friends seems to be moving away clearly from the other. I don't want to mention names, for fear my readers might imagine that I'm behaving unfairly. All I have to say is: Continue to move in that direction!

PS As you can see, there's no way in the world that I would ever allow myself to be as outspoken as Robert De Niro. Besides, that would be needless overkill. Even the worst politicians in France are angelic when compared with the vulgar Trump "punk".

Juppé to be interviewed on TV

This evening, presidential candidate Alain Juppé will be interviewed on France 2 by David Pujadas and Léa Salamé.

It should be an important encounter, because this is the major political talk show. If everything were to go over well, as it should, then Juppé would be closer than ever to his goal of becoming the next president of France. The only thing that surprises me is Juppé's claim to have never watched one of the previous interviews between the Pujadas/Salamé journalists and a presidential candidate. In other words, he should be perfectly spontaneous. A lot will depend, too, on the emotional state of the female journalist. Will Léa snarl at Juppé (as with Sarkozy) or will she smile (as with Montbourg)?

Probably our next president

The candidate is Alain Juppé, currently mayor of Bordeaux : our likely future president.

Click here for a short announcement of a TV documentary by FOG (Franz-Olivier Giesbert), which France will we watching this evening. If I wanted to be "sarkastic", I would say that Juppé’s major merit is that he’ll save us from Sarkozy.

France’s political establishment has always been constipated

Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte seem to be exerting a wonderful laxative effect upon many French groaning and farting observers. They do things that most serious French political figures never dream of doing. For example, they smile. Not a Sarkozy grin. Nor a Hollande giggle. Nor a Le Pen smirk. And certainly not a sinister Balkany baring of the teeth to bite you. No, believe it or not, the Macron couple actually smile, as if they’re happy. My God, there must be something wrong with them. Are they crazy? We must be careful!

French presidential face book

Everybody on the planet Earth (and maybe beyond) knows what a face book is. Did you know that this kind of document (a collection of face portraits of class students or business colleagues) is referred to in French as a trombinoscope ? That word comes from trombine, a modification of bobine, meaning a human face. Click here to access the trombinoscope of all the 82 current candidates for next year’s French presidential election.

It's a little too early to print out and frame this beautiful array of splendid heads. It's more than likely that I'll soon be publishing a revised version, both bigger and better.

Montebourg asks Hollande to drop out of the race

After announcing his own candidacy, Arnaud Montebourg asked the president François Hollande politely to drop out of the forthcoming presidential course. Is the current president likely to follow this advice? I don't think so. Montebourg is indeed a powerful but fragile young athlete, whereas Hollande is an experienced Marathon Man.

Incidentally, Montebourg hasn't defined and announced his candidacy in clear terms. That's to say, he hasn't yet declared whether or not he intends to participate in possible "primaries" in the Socialist context. Count upon the French to render their elections as incomprehensible (for outsiders, in particular) as you might possibly imagine. They're a fine nation, but a mixed-up people. They refrain eternally from speaking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They prefer to beat around the bush.

Sarko announces his presidential candidacy

Nicolas Sarkozy lors d'un rassemblement à Arcachon (Gironde),
le 23 juin 2016. (THIBAUD MORITZ / AFP)

This is the biggest non-surprise of the year. The former president Nicolas Sarkozy has written a book, Tout pour la France (Everything for France), in which he announces his intention to abandon his present role as chief of the political party Les Républicains in order to become a presidential candidate for next year’s election.

Ecology candidate

Photo Guillaume Souvant.AFP

Cécile Duflot has just confirmed that she will be a candidate in the French presidential election of 2017. She speaks the truth when she says that the battle will be tough (in French, rude). For Cécile in particular. In her declaration, she praises a recent papal encyclical named Laudato si, but I see no praise for the individuals who recently made COP21 a grand success.

French presidential candidate, fruitcake category

This relatively moronic French fellow, Jacques Cheminade, has just enrolled himself as a presidential candidate. He competed already in 2012 and obtained 0.25% of the votes. One of Cheminade's popular plans is to set up colonies on the Moon and the planet Mars. He has also compared Obama to Hitler.

One of many versions of the Antipodes Law of Intelligence

Anybody who explicitly compares somebody with Hitler is probably a nitwit.

French president's big flop

Finally, in spite of an early promise, our constitution will not be altered to deal with French terrorists. In the wake of the terrorist acts of 13 November 2015, François Hollande had suggested that the nationality of our home-grown criminals might be altered, to render them harmless.

Unfortunately, right from the start, this seemingly smart idea got screwed up, and went wrong. Today's official backflip is a major setback for our president. I can't imagine how he might possibly recover his popularity, and get reelected for a second presidential term.

Still more right-wing candidates to come

In the context of next year's presidential election in France, this is an updated presentation of right-wing candidates from the group associated with the ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy. You'll notice that Sarko himself is not yet present in the list.

From left to right: Alain Juppé, François Fillon, Hervé Mariton, Frédéric Lefebvre, Jean-Frédéric Poisson, Nadine Morano and Jean-François Copé.

We're also awaiting the candidacies of Bruno Le Maire and Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet.

One of their left-wing opponents said that Sarko's crowd will soon be big enough to make up a football team. But can we be certain, when the new season starts next year, that the former captain will still be running around excitedly on the playing field?

Personally, I wouldn't bet on it. Not at all...