Tuesday Map: Following les candidats
It’s crunch time for France’s presidential candidates. With the first round beginning on Sunday, Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou, and Jean-Marie Le Pen are pounding the pavement in a last-ditch effort to round up votes. Who will win? The latest polls posted on Le Monde‘s website depict a tightening race between Sarkozy and Royal, ...
It's crunch time for France's presidential candidates. With the first round beginning on Sunday, Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou, and Jean-Marie Le Pen are pounding the pavement in a last-ditch effort to round up votes. Who will win? The latest polls posted on Le Monde's website depict a tightening race between Sarkozy and Royal, the two frontrunners. If Sarkozy wins, he'll have to deal with the fact that he's deeply hated in Muslim and immigrant areas for his actions as interior minister during the 2005 unrest, when he famously denounced rioting youth as "scum."
As you can see from the following Google mashup map of the candidates' public appearances, Sarkozy has studiously avoided North African suburbs of Paris like Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois, ground zero for the riots. (Sarkozy's is the blue and red UMP logo; Royal is depicted by the purple-ringed icon in the middle of the map.)
It’s crunch time for France’s presidential candidates. With the first round beginning on Sunday, Nicolas Sarkozy, Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou, and Jean-Marie Le Pen are pounding the pavement in a last-ditch effort to round up votes. Who will win? The latest polls posted on Le Monde‘s website depict a tightening race between Sarkozy and Royal, the two frontrunners. If Sarkozy wins, he’ll have to deal with the fact that he’s deeply hated in Muslim and immigrant areas for his actions as interior minister during the 2005 unrest, when he famously denounced rioting youth as “scum.”
As you can see from the following Google mashup map of the candidates’ public appearances, Sarkozy has studiously avoided North African suburbs of Paris like Montfermeil and Clichy-sous-Bois, ground zero for the riots. (Sarkozy’s is the blue and red UMP logo; Royal is depicted by the purple-ringed icon in the middle of the map.)
And who can blame him for staying away? David Rieff, writing in Sunday’s New York Times, quotes Mamadou, a Muslim from one of Paris’s notorious banlieues:
If I could get my hands on Sarkozy, I’d kill him.”
Sarkozy is making a lot of sense on economic reform and relations with the United States, but if he does win, he’s going to have to govern millions of people like Mamadou who hate his guts almost as vehemently. How’s that going to work?
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