"No, he'll have to stay up a while longer," said the mayor of my commune in the Midi-Pyrenees region, gazing at the official photograph of Jacques Chirac that hangs over his desk, as it does in all the 36,000 town halls of France. A Chirac 12 years younger, newly elected, inspiring hope. "He's been there almost since I got the job. When I arrived, Mitterrand was there." Both presidents were figureheads, deliberately remote from petty, everyday concerns. Monarchs. Today Nicolas Sarkozy, and the electorate, see power differently.
"It'll be months before we get the new Sarkozy," sighs the mayor, used to French bureaucracy. "Choosing the right photographer… deciding on the right image. Mitterrand was reading in a library…" Behind Chirac is a château—symbolising what? Old France? Personal wealth? What will Sarkozy choose as a backdrop? Burning cars?
More likely the new president will present himself seated at a modern desk, sleeves rolled up, dark patches under the armpit, working for the nation. That's the "great change in politics"—Sarkozy's promise and battle cry. "Chirac gave us fine phrases—la fracture sociale, peace, solidarity. People here don't feel concerned by any of that," continues the mayor. "Sarkozy promised to change the 35-hour week, lower employers' charges. More, he gave himself deadlines. He's the first president to be that practical."
Another key difference is their priorities. When Chirac was re-elected in 2002, he announced three major goals: the fight against cancer, the integration of the handicapped and road safety. Sarkozy's three goals are work, work and, when the work is done, a just reward. Chirac's programmes all focused on the negative: illness, disability and sudden death. Sarkozy is driven by hope and a desire to do better.
"Work," says Alfred, a sheep farmer, struggling to fit his ample frame into his blue overalls. "He put his finger right on it. He didn't talk much about France profonde, but every time he mentioned work, we felt involved." It's nearly 7.00am; Alfred is about to start two hours' milking. Like many of my neighbours, he provides milk for Roquefort, and, like most of his colleagues, he voted Sarkozy—the man who promised to fight for the France that gets up early.
"He talked about what's important to us. The nation. The flag. La préférence nationale." The slogan of the Front National? He shrugs: "Economic preference within Europe… people here want more protection for what they produce."
There are few large companies in rural France—most people are self-employed, perhaps with an assistant. A company employing 15 is fêted by the local mayor as a major industrial presence. The problem is those companies are either wholly dependent on orders from larger ones—Airbus or Renault—which are themselves shrinking capacity, or they are niche speciality products, like Roquefort cheese. The former dare not expand, the latter say expansion would be counter-productive to their image.
But although people here are positive about Sarkozy's different approach, there is one important aspect of it which worries me: his use of history—mémoire. Ironically, it is precisely for his vision of history that Chirac may best be remembered. Soon after his inauguration in 1995, he delivered a speech in which he courageously told the truth about France's collaboration with Nazi Germany, during which some 76,000 people, including over 4,000 children, were sent to the death camps. Only 3 per cent returned. "The occupier was assisted by the French, by the French state. France committed l'irréparable." It had taken 50 years to admit what everyone knew, but it exploded the official myth created by De Gaulle that Vichy, and the tens of thousands of French police and militia working for it, were somehow not French. Applauded internationally, Chirac was criticised at home, and 12 years later Sarkozy closed this window on reality: "France has never exterminated a people, France has never committed any crime against humanity, France has never committed genocide." (The 40,000 guillotined during the Terror, up to 80,000 killed in Madagascar in 1947, Algeria, all conveniently forgotten.) This return to De Gaulle's vision of a mythical, mystic France is deliberate, tying in with Sarkozy's use of the nation and the flag. It is why his first act as president was, with tearful homage, to place the resistance martyrs at the centre of his vision of France. There are few things more prone to mythification.
For Sarkozy, mythical, mystic France is vital. Indeed, if the official photograph does show Sarkozy working at his desk, he will not be drafting the future but busily rewriting history. In 2005 he gave his support to legislation compelling French schools to teach the positive aspects of colonialism in north Africa. The law highlights the difference between Sarkozy and Chirac. Sarkozy said: "We must stop this permanent repentance, apologising for the history of France." Chirac turned a blind eye to the damage it was doing to Franco-Algerian relations until he could no longer ignore protests from his own historians and Algeria, then he stepped in and repealed the law. But it had taken him a full year to act.
