Cicilie among the Parisians

In my previous entry I had forgotten to paste in a link, which would have given more sense to the claim that choosing between Le Pen and Sarkozy isn’t much of a choice to some radical commentators. This omission gives me the possibility to return for a second to the poster put up around Paris just before Christmas, which didn’t make the ruling party very happy: Votez Le Pen.

The first time I saw the poster on the wall, someone – in typical French public, democratic tradition – had embellished Sarkozy’s face with the facial characteristics of Dracula. (The streets of Paris are full of such popular voicing of opinion, on posters or as comments written on the wall or on other signs or posters). Quite understandably, the poster has created a number of discussions on the Internet, as well (see further down).

Picture to the right: A sticker on the wall with a drawing of a matchbox with Sarkozy's face and the text: 40 banlieue matches.

A non-exhaustive list of sites on the Internet discussing the controversy:
- An article on the matter in The Guardian (in English!)

- Articles (in French) from the political group (Act up, for HIV positives, who made the poster in order to protest against the immigration policy of Sarkozy: The press release “A poster to denounce a racist discourse and a fatal policy” and an article on all the controversy it stirred.

- Le Monde's article (in French) "Act up withdraws the poster from their site"

- An interview with Sakrozy in Liberation (in French) "I know better than Thuram what's happening in the banlieues" and the reply from Act Up the day after: "Sarkozy caricatures himself".

- A number of discussions in Internet chat rooms and blogs: France TV 5, samizdat.net, les indigenes de la republique,
Indymedia, rebellyon.info, grioo.com, and so on...