Everyone has by now had a chuckle at the news that Francois Hollande, the newly elected President of France was almost lost to history when his plane was struck by lightning last Tuesday some five hours after his Inauguration. He had barely had time to swallow his valedictory lunch when he was on his way to confer with Angela Merkel, a Valkyrie who appeared before him as Valkyries do appear before warriors when they are about to die. Hollande, aptly nicknamed “Flanby” after a brand of caramel custard pudding (bland, slippery and syrupy) was flying with unseemly haste to meet the Iron Chancellor, thus perhaps inviting the anger of Thor the Thunder God.
Why, one wonders, would he not have waited to have a quiet word with Merkel during the following weekend’s G8? Coupled with his announcement of a German scholar and former teacher as his Prime Minister, does this not seem like bending over backwards to please the Germans? Surely we have been here before?
There is something about this leader that made me enquire, before his election on May 6th if there were any way by which an elected President could be replaced under the French constitution. Not only due to his plane being struck by lightning.
If a President dies in office the President of the Senate takes charge of the government while new elections are organized. But, what of unconstitutional methods of replacement?
One evening in April before Round 1 of the Presidential vote, I was returning from a minor late night shopping trip on the Champs Elysées when the most almighty row broke out in the street. Some 100 police cars were jamming the avenue with their sirens blaring, lights flashing. I rode my bike down the pavement and into the park that separates the Champs Elysées from the Avenue Gabriel, where the lush gardens and ornate rear gates of the Elysée Palace, and the American and British Embassies are routinely guarded by uniformed police.
To my surprise, rue Marigny, leading to the rue Faubourg St Honore and the Elysée’s front entrance was also blocked by a line of police cars, lights flashing and sirens screaming. All routes to the Presidential Palace were cut off and surrounded. Sneaking along among the trees without lights, I saw silhouetted uniformed figures carrying guns lined up behind the Elysée’s tall garden gates. Golly, I thought, is this a Coup d’Etat? Even before the first round of the Presidential election, could fears of who might be elected, either the extreme left Mélenchon or the extreme right Le Pen with riots to follow have prompted a ‘leave nothing to chance’ military takeover?
It seems the police were protesting about the prosecution of a colleague for shooting dead a runaway thief, and the Army were guarding the Elysée against the rebel cops. Further down the leafy Avenue Gabriel near Place de La Concorde, the blue vans of the Police National were lined up in case they needed to reinforce the military defenders of the President’s palace.
It was spectacularly alarming. But not perhaps as disquieting an omen as the Biblical style meteorological phenomena in the hours before Hollande’s election, or those that occurred before, during and immediately after his inauguration on May 15th. The night before the election a torrential three hour storm led to a night of steady rain so that when I walked by the Seine as the election results were announced the following evening, I had to dodge the waves sloshing over the side of the quai. The river had risen three meters and was about to burst its banks. Meanwhile, the celebrants of Hollande’s victory who danced the rest of the evening in the streets around Bastille did so without any sense of foreboding.
Perhaps they were right? I think not. Hollande, or Flanby, the apt nickname by which I prefer to call him, is no Moses. He does not possess the gifts of foresight, eloquence and leadership to guide his country through the coming crises of the European Union. Perhaps Noah would be a more useful President. Flanby’s idea of economic growth is one based on government spending and taxation, shored up by more debt. This loony idea is now spreading. And Obama, King of the Big Spenders is holding Flanby’s limp hand on this whizz of a notion. The torrential rainstorm during the Inauguration and the lightning strike on the flight to Germany seem omens of a future fraught with dangers as yet unknown. Pie in the sky or fries in the sky: no difference.
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