Who voted National Front? You’d never know in Rennes

Date: 25/04/02

By Simon Coss

THEY must be out there somewhere.

Nearly one in five people who turned out for last Sunday's election voted extreme right, but you wouldn't know it from talking to people here.

'It's weird, 20 of people voted Le Pen, but everyone I've asked said they didn't,' says Sebastien Lopez, a 35-year-old ice cream seller in Rennes' elegant belle epoch Place de la Mairie.

Lopez has been doing a roaring trade during the glorious sunny weather of the past three days, since news of Le Pen's 'thunderbolt' victory filtered through and thousands of mainly young protestors swarmed to the town centre to express their anger, shock and shame.

'They've been here every day and most nights,' says Lopez as he serves up another vanilla.

But while you can't move here without bumping into an anti-Le Pen protestor - and it's the same across the country - the former paratrooper's supporters are keeping a distinctly low profile.

Rennes is perhaps an atypical town when it comes to last Sunday's election. Socialist Lionel Jospin actually topped the poll here - Le Pen only came in fourth after Jacques Chirac and Green Noel Mamère.

Nevertheless, nearly 12 backed extreme right candidates, so you would have thought it wouldn't have been that hard to find at least one proud National Front supporter.

Not a bit of it.

The nearest I came to unearthing a possible 'Le Peniste' was a conversation with a 65-year old man who didn't want to tell me his name.

'The other day I went to the dentist and he pulled out three teeth,' he told me, proudly showing off the corresponding gaps in his lower jaw.

'Then I said, how do you expect me to pay for this? and he said, 'if you were a foreigner it would be free',' he continued.

'Everything's free for them, the foreigners.'

But while such comments suggest that my dentally challenged interlocutor probably put a cross next to the National Front candidate last Sunday, he would not come out and say it. After failing miserably to uncover any real life Le Penistes, I decided to check the web. It's a well-known fact that the internet gives people the chance to say what they want under the cover of relative anonymity. And sure enough, a discussion forum hosted by French television station TF1 came up with the goods.

'I think the extreme right or the NF is a new departure for France and that all those young students don't understand that France needs Le Pen,' wrote Jean-Philippe from Cognac.

'I think it's very good that Le Pen will be in the second round. Perhaps there will finally be some order in France,' added Philippe from Calais. But even online, the vast majority of comments about last Sunday's result reflect the fact that Le Pen's victory came as a huge shock.

The definitive results show that the extreme right wing candidate only polled 0.68 more votes than Jospin. If the left wing vote had not been split between Jospin and six other candidates who were never going to make it into the second round, the outgoing prime minister could have polled a further 20.

Several people I spoke to who voted for these smaller left-wing candidates as a way of sending a message to Jospin to fight a more traditionally socialist campaign, said they never thought for a second that they would be paving the way for Le Pen.

They will now find themselves swallowing their pride and voting for Gaullist Jacques Chirac - a man mired in scandal allegations and widely known here as 'Superliar' - in the decisive round of the elections on 5 May. Ironically, Chirac was in Rennes this week. He used a campaign meeting on Tuesday night to tell an audience of supporters that he would not take part in a televised debate with Le Pen.

'Faced with intolerance and hate, no transactions are possible, no compromises are possible, no debate is possible,' he said. Chirac added that he refused categorically to 'quit Europe, which represents peace, democracy liberty and prosperity'.