France, and the new president Sarkozy in particular, have joined a small group of countries that have chosen to recognise the important role women can play in a country's politics. Other countries to have done this -- with great success -- are, for instance, Sweden, Finland, Chile and Spain.In Sarkozy's government of fifteen ministers, seven ministers are women.
Here are thumbnail portraits of the seven women (as published by AFP):
The Minister of the Interior: Michele Alliot-Marie
This 60-year-old is known familiarly in France as "MAM", a loyal follower of former president Jacques Chirac and a lawyer by training. The first woman to chair Chirac's right-wing RPR party, the ancestor of the ruling UMP, she was also the first woman to be named defence minister, a post she has held since 2002.
Long seen as a potential rival for the presidential nomination, Alliot-Marie swung in behind Sarkozy's campaign at the last moment after winning guarantees that he would open up his government to moderate right-wingers.
The Minister for Justice: Rachida DatiDati, 41, became a national figure as Sarkozy's official spokeswoman during the election campaign. One of 12 children of north African immigrants, she qualified as a magistrate and worked as an accountant before becoming Sarkozy's advisor on delinquency in 2002.
Dati, who has strongly supported Sarkozy's ideas on affirmative action to help minorities, would be the first politician of North African origin to hold a senior French government post.
Minister for Agriculture: Christine Lagarde
Once listed as one of the world's most powerful women by Forbes magazine, the 51-year-old Lagarde is a high-flying corporate lawyer who was the first woman to head the executive committee of the major US law firm Baker and McKenzie.
She joined the outgoing French government in 2005, serving as international trade minister. An employment and antitrust specialist, Lagarde is also a former competition-level synchronized swimmer.
Minister for Higher Education: Valerie Pecresse
A spokeswoman for Sarkozy's UMP party, the 39-year-old entered politics in 1998 as an advisor to Chirac. She was France's youngest Member of Parliament when first elected in 2002, and has since divided her attention between thorny issues such as bioethics, and work on the family and the rights of juvenile offenders.
Minister for Culture: Christine Albanel
Currently director of the chateau of Versailles, the 51-year-old Albanel was for many years a close advisor and speech-writer for Jacques Chirac. She is a former senior member of the foundation for the memory of the Holocaust, and is a published playwright.
Minister for Health, Youth and Sport: Roselyne Bachelot
A staunch feminist, Bachelot, 60, is a former environment minister and was Chirac's spokeswoman in the 2002 presidential campaign. Known for her outspoken views, Bachelot was the only right-wing deputy in the French parliament to back a 1999 law introducing same-sex unions.
Minister for Social Cohesion: Christine Boutin
Boutin, 63, is a Member of Parliament best known for her opposition to same-sex unions. A fervent Catholic, she chairs a French pro-life group and is an active anti-poverty campaigner. She ran for the presidency in 2002, winning just over one percent of the vote, before rallying Chirac's UMP party.
Sarkozy has chosen well, it seems. On the night of the results of the elections, I mentioned to a friend that if Sarkozy were clever, he would take the best of the opposition and offer them top jobs. A statesman and good leader selects on merit -- the best person for every portfolio, no matter their political leanings, and Sarkozy has done exactly that. He has most certainly irked his opponents and surprised supporters by courting leftwing politicians for top positions in his Cabinet. He has carefully selected the fifteen ministers in whose hands the vital change and strategising for the future of a more dynamic, more pro-active and above all, more progressive France will be entrusted. The seven women who will form part of his cabinet are all very highly competent women who have proved their ability, their versatility and their enthusiasm to bring about change in France. Amongst the men are senior politicians from the opposition, the Socialist party. One of them is the Socialist human rights campaigner, Bernard Kouchner, a former doctor who founded the relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres, whom Sarkozy has appointed as his foreign minister.
The Socialist Party immediately moved to distance itself from Mr Kouchner, saying he was no longer a member -- just once again showing their pettiness and lack of substance. Rather than take the view that one of their 'own' was considered the right person for this most important job and being proud of his achievement, they choose to disown him. I am willing to bet if François Hollande, leader of the Socialists and partner of Segolene Royal had been approached to take on an important portfolio, he would have jumped at the opportunity, but ala! poor M. Hollande was not asked.... tsk.. tsk....
"President Sarkozy's "government of all the talents" include, in the key cabinet posts :
Prime Minister: Francois Fillon
Environment, Sustainable Development and Energy Minister: Alain Juppe
Foreign Minister: Bernard Kouchner
Economy, Finance and Employment Minister: Jean-Louis Borloo
Interior Minister: Michele Alliot-Marie
Justice Minister: Rachida Dati
Defence Minister: Herve Morin
I was excited about the new French president's choice of cabinet -- they look good, their qualifications read well, they all have experience in different fields and have been handpicked for the jobs awaiting them : all a good formula that bodes well for the future.
But then you get the critics who sit on the sidelines -- like a bunch of cackling ole biddies, clicking away with their knitting needles -- and with their sharp tongues, looking for any possible point to criticise, malign and dissect. The kind of people who feel they have to add something to the debate, and rather something negative, for that is more likely to make the news.
I appreciate commentary when it is constructive criticism -- but when it is based on pure conjecture or hearsay or assumptions, the result is often patronising and demeaning - and ugly.
Such was, I believe, the commentary in a Moroccan blog on the appointment of Rachida Dati as the Minister of Justice in the new French cabinet. I wondered whether the author of this blog, a young American woman who lives in Morocco, realised that her patronising comments were derogatory to the point of being racist and bigoted?
She calls Rachida Dati, the first person of an ethnic minority to hold a senior position in the French government, a French Orio, which is, she explains, "North African on the outside, bigoted Caucasian on the inside".
Ms Dati, one of twelve children of an Algerian mother and Moroccan father, has risen in the ranks like a shooting star. Since early childhood she has stood out for her intelligence and hard work -- She credits her mother for her persistent drive and determination to better not only herself but also the lot of those around her. Thanks to her hardworking parents - who wished for their children the opportunities they had not had, she went to university where she excelled in her studies - first in law and then in accounting. She worked for the oil giant, Elf and from 1997 to 1999 she continued her studies - this time to become magistrate. In 2002 she joined Mr Sarkozy's interior ministry, and immediately started playing a key role in improving relations with immigrant communities in the suburbs. Ms Dati acted as Mr Sarkozy's spokeswoman during his presidential campaign. Even Sarkozy's opponents could find no wrong with Ms Dati --- she has, in every position she has held and in everything she has done, excelled in her excellence and her commitment to the job at hand, and was, in every respect always the choice of merit.
When one reads Ms Liosliath's comments and name-calling, one can only cringe. Where she could have redeemed herself somewhat for her lack of research when a Mahgrebian responds to her rant in defence of Ms Dati having achieved such success due to hard work and commitment, and asks "Why can't an immigrant child share the same views as Sarkozy? (or any other rightist politician for that matter)
Is the "right" always wrong on immigration issues and the "left" always right? Why can't a Moroccan share the same views as Sarkozy, based on her own evaluation and experience? Why does that make her an "Oreo"/ Uncle Tom? Isn't that also discrimination and bigotry? Well, yeah it is.", she instead makes the inane and unfounded comment "Actually, no, it's not. Ms. Dati's parents wouldn't even have been allowed to enter France under Sarkozy's proposed immigration policies, and that's just one of the reasons I find her so hypocritical. She's pursued Sarkozy for years, begging to be part of his team - obviously morals are trumped by career ambition in her case". -- and one feels like saying --- You poor misdirected person. Don't you know that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging?
In a major publication this week, the doyenne of women in politics in France, la grande dame, Simone Veil, (survivor of Auchwitz, President of European Parliament, Minister in French government, author of La Loi Veil -- legalising abortion in France, et al) underlines the exceptional character, personal value and work ethic of Rachida Dati. She met Dati back in 1992 when she was instrumental in bridging the gap in the debate that was raging at the time over whether muslim girls should be allowed to wear their scarves to school. So impressed was Simone Veil with this young woman at the time, that they have become close friends with a great mutial respect for each other ever since.It is altogether a very interesting phenomenon, the reaction to these French elections! Looking at the reaction from where I am sitting, I am fascinated with the vehemence in which people are reacting to Nicolas Sarkozy's election as the new President of France. What interests me so much is that the most reaction comes from those who did not vote.
In France itself there has been commentary from the losers, the Socialists, yes -- but at the end of the day, they know that it was a completely free and fair election in a democratic process and that the man with the most votes won. Instead of continuing to find fault with everything that Sarkozy is and stands for and instead of denigrating his appointed government members, they very quickly turned back into themselves and started analysing the reasons for once again losing the presidential election. They immediately started looking at their lack of convincing policy -- in fact, lack of any policy. They immediately acknowledged that they had placed too much hope on the 'romance' of an attractive well-spoken woman winning over the hearts of the French nation, rather than forming an agenda and a plan for the future that would persuade the nation to vote for a socialist government.
However, the worst critics react as if Sarkozy had bulldozed his way into the presidency. They totally ignore the fact that there was a perfectly legal election that put him in office. They build up the losers as having been duped, tricked out of their rightful position, robbed of a socialist president.
There was a lovely article in one of the British newspapers a couple of weeks ago where the reporter talks about the worst critics of the government are the people who write letters to the paper's Editor, from addresses in the Dordogne or the Algarve.
I can remember years ago in South Africa, pre- the 1995 elections, it used to be the same thing -- the worst critics of South Africa were expats safely ensconced in their new abodes in Sydney or Perth or Montreal or San Diego or Ealing from where they had every source of every wrong and every solution to every outrage. And those of us who had stayed behind to help build the new nation wanted to say to them -- "If you feel so strongly about what is happening in this country, why are you not here to help with the work?"
But this instance is almost worse than even that! "THE BRITISH REVOLT AGAINST NEW FRANCE" read the headlines in the Daily Express of Saturday 19 May. Peter Allen, in Paris wrote: With its easy pace of life, affordable houses and beautiful countryside, France has always been a mecca for Britons seeking a better life abroad.
But those analysing last week's election of Right-wing President Nicolas Sarkozy, who replaces Jacques Chirac after 12 years in power, have hinted the glorious "Vie Française" may be about to change for ever. The 52-year-old conservative sees himself as a Margaret Thatcher figure, ready to revolutionise his country in the same way she did with Britain in the Eighties. This means battles with the trade unions, tax cuts to encourage small businesses and the replacing of strict job protection and bureaucracy with an entrepreneurial, can-do attitude in almost every aspect of working life."
He then goes on to clarify what it is that threatens the expats living the easy life the most: "Mr Sarkozy has already pledged a "rupture" with the comfortable welfare state and called the country's 35-hour working week "absurd".
Most of all he wants to stimulate growth in the economy, with people being encouraged to look for a quick profit in every aspect of life.
Horror! Stimulate growth in the economy??? Heaven forbid!
"Businessman Tom Lodge, 51, who lives with his family near Toulouse, in the south-west, said: "Those of us who remember the profound social changes which happened in Britain under Thatcher can't help believing that exactly the same thing is going to happen to France under Sarkozy."
And the crux of the fear?
"Although people made a lot of money under Thatcher, there's no doubt that the atmosphere and pace of life changed for the worst in many parts of the country."
The article continues in this vein, quoting a large number of Brits that live mainly in the Eymet area -- a beautiful spot here in the Dordogne. And one can only wonder at the short-sightedness and selfishness of people who are here for the good life, and would rather the country around them stagnates, deteriorates and eventually crumble -- as long as it is not in their lifetime -- than change for the better of the entire French nation.
It would be a good thing if all French expats were obliged to vote -- and if all expats from other countries who live in France, were obliged to vote as well --- but only after they had been given some kind of information update and exposure to the election campaigns of all parties beforehand -- to ensure that they were well informed and could thus make an informed decision as to which party they wish to vote for.
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