Word: penned
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...country that prides itself on the Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, the surprisingly strong showing of far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of presidential balloting is both unexpected and deeply distressing. But the French contrarian streak was out in force last Sunday when the nation gave Le Pen one of the two spots in the May 5 run-off for president...
...Pen has referred to the Holocaust as a “detail” of history and seeks to outlaw the wearing of Muslim headscarves in schools. He would end legal immigration to France and expel illegal immigrants already in the country. In an editorial Monday, the publisher of the left-leaning French daily Le Monde referred to Le Pen as a “sinister demagogue” and wrote of the humiliation that citizens feel at the strong showing of a man who has often been accused of racism. Despite Le Pen’s radical positions...
...opportunity to send a message to their parties in the way that primary voters do in U.S. elections. At least half of the candidates were to the left of Jospin and the Socialists, and although Jospin only got 16 percent of the vote (compared with 17 percent for Le Pen and 20 percent for Chirac), the combined vote for Jospin and those to the left of him was around 42 percent. The combined vote for Chirac and those to his right was a slightly lower figure. Right now there are a lot of leftwing voters out there kicking themselves...
Here's why far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen will advance to the second round of the French presidential election: An unusually high number of voters stayed home, and a lot of dissention among the voters of the left. Nearly 30 percent of the electorate stayed away from Sunday's poll, and their abstention is believed to have hurt Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin more than any of his rivals. A large stay-away also means that the results were skewed to the more ideologically motivated voters, who tend to favor more extreme parties...
...Explanations and excuses aside, there are some very disturbing facts here. More people voted for the extreme rightwing candidates Le Pen and Bruno Megret (who broke away from Le Pen's national front after a personality clash with the leader) than for the sitting president. That can't simply be written off as a protest vote. There's an extreme-right, xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiment that is no longer shy of expressing itself in mainstream French politics...