French Politics

FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS OF 2012 

Who will be in charge of France in 2012? Who will help the French population to pick up after the crisis? Several people want to do this job, but who will be elected? And what are their plans? We asked about that...

By Ophélie Morilleau - - Caté

The first round of voting will start on April, 22, 2012, and the second; on May, 6.

All candidates must have validated their declaration of candidacy by the Constitutional Council before March, 16 and the official list of all candidates will be published on March, 20 but some people already declared themselves as candidates. (Let’s set the record straight) about the candidates.

For the Right Wing Party, there are six potentials candidates:

For the UMP (Union for a popular movement) Nicolas Sarkozy, the current President, wants to run for the next election again, but the unfavourable results of the polls and the bad popularity ratings showed that he has slim chances to be re-elected. But if he decides to give up, three others men can stand up to represent the UMP : Alain Juppé, François Fillon and Jean-François Copé.

Dominique de Villepin represents his own party, the Solidarity Republic (République Solidaire).

Christine Boutin, the president of the Christian Democrat party (Chrétien-Démocrate) is also runing for the next election also.

The party Hunt, Fish, Nature and Traditions (“Chasse, Pêche, Nature et Traditions”) is represented by Frédéric Nihous.

Moreover, Marine Lepen is candidate and represents the Extremist Right-Wing Party.

Nicolas Stoquer and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan runs for the elections too, respectively for the Rally For France Party ( Rassemblement pour la France) and Stand-Up France (“Debout la France”.)

All we know for the moment, even if there are six candidates for the Right-Wing Party, it is Nicolas Sarkozy who leads the way, according to the opinion polls.

For the Left-wing party, there is also one candidate for the PS (Socialist Party): François Hollande. He was elected to represent his party during the Socialist Primary election, on October, 9 and 16 2011.

Eva Joly, who represents the Ecologic party runs for office too.

Jean-Pierre Chevènement wants to be president by representing his party  the Republican and Citizen Movement.

Other people are running for election too, like François Bayrou who is the President of the Democrat Movement. He announced his third candidacy for the Presidential election. There is also a only-26-years-old man named, Alexandre Callet, and a student who wants to represent the voice of the young people: Maxime Verner … and also a pastor who is known for his participation at a reality TV show Secret Story on 2007 , Laurent Lenne. In other words, candidates are diverse and numerous!

Let’s see, shall we?