05.27.05
Chirac, the jungle tribes and the EU referendum
This is a fantastic article from The Sunday Times (Chirac counts on jungle tribes to swing EU vote, 22 May 2005) about the role of France’s overseas territories in this weekend’s referendum on the EU Constitution. I wanted to blog it at the time but was having trouble finding the URL for the web version.
The article basically looks at all the overseas territories – from French Guiana to New Caledonia – and how elections are run there and how they are likely to vote. It focuses quite a bit on the Wayampi tribe of French Guiana, who treat elections as an excuse for a village feast. They have benefited a lot from EU subsidies and are likely to vote oui. France has 1.4 million overseas voters and traditionally they have been able to swing the result of very close elections.
It’s also very well written and a great read. It’s everything a story should be – lots of lovely detail about the jungle tribes and lots of analysis about the significance of these voters and put together in a really elegant way.
It’s particularly interesting for me to read about French Guiana, having worked in Guyana, a former British colony, for four months in 1999. While I agree with national independence and self determination of peoples, it is sad to note that the French Guianese seem much better off than the Guyanese, although they were much more on a par 40 years ago.
Meanwhile, Chirac is saying he will ignore the results of the referendum in the event of a non vote and ask other countries to ratify it anyway. He doesn’t want it to seem that France is the one blocking the constitution. (Which would certainly be ironic since the document was basically written by France!). This would obviously put the Blair Government on the spot, given they had hoped to avoid the embarrassment of a ‘no’ vote if the French knocked it down first.
The Dutch also go to the polls to vote on the new constitution next week and they are also looking none too impressed with the idea of expanding the power of Brussels.
