April: Choice

At last, after more than a quarter of a century of living in France, we now have the chance to vote for our next president. Unfortunately, if the opinion polls are to be believed, it will boil down to the Hobson's choice of.... 'in the blue corner, the man in the suit, your friend and mine, the career opportunist... E-man-uel Micron; and in the even bluer corner, the bleached blonde breeder of kittens, with the far-right leanings, Maaaaarine Le Pen!!'

For the first round, however, we are presented with a choice of around ten candidates, hope-ful and hope-less. A mixed bunch of idealists and extremists. Each of us received an A4 envelope with manifestos. Given the fact that we don't watch French television nor read French newspapers, our only way of assessing their credentials is by reading said manifestos. But then, we all know that politicians lie and break promises as regularly as decent working people change their underwear. So, I shall be guided by Greenpeace's assessment of their environmental stance. Needless to say, that of the big two is flaky, shaky and ultimately untenable. Fed up with tactical voting, I'll be swayed by environmental concerns. It'll be a wasted vote, but someone's got to vote for an issue that's bigger than the old familiar concerns.

The electoral system, built upon an appalling waste of paper (since multiple duplicates of the manifestos will be spread out on the tables of the Salle Polyvalente where we vote), is puzzling – and therefore, it seems, peculiarly French. This is how it works, unless I have got it all wrong: After presenting your electoral card and your carte d'identité for checking, you go into a little booth and put your candidate's piece of paper into an envelope given to you by the card-checker. You shouldn't, as I did this morning, take a diversion to say hello to the volunteers at the other desk, thus creating confusion as to whether or not you've actually voted.

On your way to the booth – unless you've thought about it beforehand and bring your candidate's piece of paper with you, secreting it carefully in a pocket, say, to ensure that no one sees the telltale name that gives your game away – you pick up a piece of paper for each  candidate so that the volunteers don't spot your choice. In the booth, you put only one piece of paper in the envelope. The rest get chucked in a bin. You don't, as I do each time, attempt to seal the envelope, thus leaving incriminating traces of spit that could be forensically traced to you.

Finally, you take your envelope back to the team of two or three volunteers, one of whom is there to open the little letterbox affair with a knob. You pop your envelope inside and he or she announces 'A voté!' (has voted). I performed this role myself in the recent communal elections during the two-hour lunch period (because everyone knows that the British aren't like the French and don't sit down for a two-hour lunch at 12 on the dot, which makes them the ideal recruits for this graveyard slot), but I suspect that I didn't make my announcements with sufficient conviction or gusto, because so far I haven't been asked back. Perhaps if I gargle regularly and practise a bit more, the day might yet come to pass.

At this point, you sign your name in a little rectangular space on the electoral list and you are now free to walk. It's second nature to the indigenous population, but all three of us somehow find it a very self-conscious and nerve-wracking affair. Quite apart from the business of erroneously licking envelopes, there are other issues that make you question whether you carried out your citizen's duty to the letter of the law. Did anyone see my pre-prepared piece of paper when I pulled out my electoral card? Did I, in fact, put the right piece of paper in the envelope? Will my fellow communards think that I'm an idiot and therefore that all foreigners are stupid?

Come the second round in a fortnight's time, I'm expecting to abstain because I can't bring myself to vote for either the candidate in the blue corner or the candidate in the even bluer candidate. I could register a vote blanc by going through the whole rigmarole again and depositing an empty envelope, which at least means that you will have been seen to have done your duty. However, a neighbour told us that these 'white votes' are not registered statistically, whereas abstentions are – and that, it seems to me, makes them a more satisfactory form of protest.

Our daughter wondered whether you could volunteer to help out and then conveniently lose a few envelopes. I suggested that the number of envelopes would have to tie in with the voting record. If they didn't, I imagine that no one will be allowed to leave the premises until the discrepancy was resolved. So how about removing papers from certain envelopes and turning them into blank votes, she proposed? At this point, I had to exercise my full parental authority. Electoral fraud cannot be condoned in any circumstance, even by a member of one's own family.

So that's it, then. We'll have to wait and see and live with the result, which should be announced soon after typing. The conclusion seems foregone. There will be no pleasant surprises. In times of war and rising prices, people worry about survival in the here-and-now. It's only the privileged few who worry more about survival of the planet. So the silent or not-so-silent majority vote for the candidates who promise short-term solutions to current ails. If, ultimately, Micron gets back in for a second term, I'll try to be a more effective free radical in order to piss the man off TO THE MAX! I wish I had thought to deface his poster, with its ridiculously pat slogan Nous Tous, by adding Avec McKinsey. If it's that nice Marine Le Pen, we'll all have to hope that she doesn't renege on her seemingly more reasonable policies and turn into a female version of another well-known dictatorial animal lover (the one with the hairstyle and the silly moustache).

Vote Nobody – Just to be sure.