Word: pens
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...even given Jospin's weakness as a candidate, it was still a shock when he got fewer votes in the first round of the election than Jean-Marie Le Pen, the candidate of the far-right National Front. Le Pen will now meet President Jacques Chirac - a mainstream conservative - in a runoff on May 5. The National Front's success, wrote the editor of Le Monde last week, has "wounded" and "humiliated" France. Le Pen won't become President; Chirac is all but guaranteed to win the runoff in a landslide, as many supporters of the left, holding their noses...
...extent, he benefited from France's electoral laws, which allow multiple candidates in the first round. Jospin received just over 16% of the vote, compared with nearly 17% for Le Pen and 20% for Chirac. Other candidates of the left, together with the Greens, gathered nearly 27%. Just as some Democrats blamed Ralph Nader for Al Gore's failure in 2000, so Jospin's supporters can blame the comrades who siphoned votes away from him. Still, the question remains: Why did so many voters desert the mainstream candidates? How about: because they are bored stiff with them. Chirac first served...
...none of these explanations quite capture the nature of Le Pen's success. He is not a new face (he first ran for the presidency in 1974), and the nature of his politics is well known. Le Pen is a racist, equal-opportunity bigot, as happy to offend Jews as Arabs. Why did the citizens of the country that likes to think of itself as the most civilized nation on earth give him more support than ever...
...French see national identity challenged by immigration and the rise of Islam; they witness governmental powers ineluctably shifting from Paris to the European Union. They fear that an American-style, unfettered free-market economy has nibbled away at social cohesion. And so they have thrown their support to Le Pen, a man who promises to turn back the clock, to rebuild a world where to live in France means that you speak, eat and buy French...
...when much of Europe takes a holiday, and the left takes to the streets. This year's big demonstrations promise to stir up deep ideological passions, about everything from immigration to Third World debt to free speech. In Paris, opponents of surprise presidential runner-up Jean-Marie Le Pen plan to confront the far-right nationalist as he leads his annual march in honor of Joan of Arc. Meanwhile, Londoners are braced for a rematch, complete with footballs, between globalization foes and the police who penned them in at Oxford Circus last year. Well, what about labor...