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Royalism Of The Day
Having upset the government of Canada, including prime minister Stephen Harper, and a majority of Canadians by calling for sovereignty for Quebec, France's socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has moved to new territory.
Ms Royal has indicated her preference for 'independence' for Napoleon's birthplace, the island of Corsica. In a recent interview with Gérald Dahan, broadcast on the well-known station RTL (Radio Television Luxembourg), she said: "The French would not be against it". (Independence for Corsica.) She added in the open un-edited broadcast: "Don't repeat it. It would create another incident". And then she finished her interview with a laugh.
The only problem is that despite the fact that there is a vocal and sometimes violent independence movement in the island, most Corsicans are happy with the substantial subsidies they receive from Paris. (A small example is that Corsica is the only place in France where there is no tax on the sale of tobacco.) The principal export of the island is chestnuts.
But our darling has gone one step further. On a weekend visit to the French Caribbean 'departments' of Guadaloupe and Martinique (formerly known as French colonies), she hinted to reporters of the popular French TV channel, TFI, that there was the possibility of independence for the two territories.
Maybe her next stop will be Tahiti. No one knows.
But CSA, a semi-official 'audiovisual' monitor and polling agency, acting for the French newspaper, Le Parisien, has counted her rating among the populace of France as 23 per cent versus her rival, centre-right politician, Nicolas Sarkozy, who gathered 47 per cent of the opinion of citizens eligible to vote. CSA also found French voters saw Sarkozy as running a more solid and serious campaign - though Royal's followers will be relieved she is thought to be more modern than Sarkozy, and that a narrow margin of voters sees her as "closer to their preoccupations" than the interior minister.
The recent polls show a slight reverse for Mme Royal, who has narrowly led Sarkozy in head-to-head polls for several months. It hardly counts as a rout, but if her ratings continue to fall, Socialists will worry: Indeed, there are whispers that senior party rivals are planning a "coup" to replace Royal as the Socialist candidate in March if she continues to lose ground against Sarkozy.
Royal's camp is striking back. A policy document is expected mid-February, long-awaited as her campaign has been strikingly light on policy. She is also branching out into foreign issues, hopefully safer territory than her recent gaffe-strewn visits.
According to one of France's leading newspapers, Le Figaro, Ms Royal claims she has made "interpersonal contacts" with world leaders. She added that she would never meet America's president George Bush. One must wonder why not: Bush is very unpopular in France but subjecting him to the sort of diplomatic snub national leaders usually reserve for the likes of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe or Iran's Holocaust-denying president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows extreme diplomatic naïveté.
And it might be said that one of her new "interpersonal contacts" will not be Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper.
