Photographer Patrick Artinian is following the French presidential election campaign trail for Mediapart, with a series of photo and video reportages of the candidates, their supporters, meetings and the milestone events. The coverage will continue all the way to the final vote on May 6th.
Here he follows President Nicolas Sarkozy on two contrasting campaign events. The first sequence is his speech, on March 31st, before the Institut pour la Justice, an association that campaigns for greater rights for victims of crime. The association has invited every election candidate to make separate appearances.
The president launched a strong attack on examining magistrates, who in France are placed in charge of investigations into serious crime, accusing them of a doctrinaire approach and of acting like a “corporation”. During his speech he was heckled by a woman in the audience, who was eventually removed.
Sarkozy has long been in conflict with the country’s independent magistrates and their associations, beginning notably when he was interior minister when he publicly criticised several judges for their lack of severity. His failed plan, when president, to replace examining magistrates with prosecutors as heads of criminal investigations caused an outcry in the judicial profession. A string of independent judicial investigations into corruption that have implicated his entourage, and indirectly implicated the president himself, notably concerning L’Oréal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and the suspected illegal funding scam known as the Karachi Affair, have heightened the tension.
“The justice [system] is not the property of a body that is independent from the nation,” said Sarkozy in his speech to the Institut pour la Justice, “it is accountable to citizens.”
He said if he was re-elected, he would move to introduce legislation so that “those who are sentenced participate more in the [payment of] indemnities awarded to victims”, and would increase the powers of courts to hand a life sentence to those found guilty of repeated sexual crimes.
That same day he attended a rally of the youth movement of his ruling UMP party. Some 8,000 young supporters gathered to hear his speech at a Paris exhibition hall at the Porte de Versailles, waving the French tricolour flag and cheering him on with chants of “we’re going to win, we’re going to win”. Sarkozy called on them “to be proud to be French” and to espouse the values of “work” and “effort”.
He promised the creation, if he is re-elected, of a special bank for young people that will support the studies and business start-ups for “all those who don’t have a family to help them”. He also promised legislation that would require companies of 250 employees or more to create more apprenticeship posts.
“I want France to be able to tell you ‘don’t be afraid’”, he said. “I’m not afraid, because I believe in the ideas that are mine. When you’re afraid, you’ve already lost.”
“There are going to be three weeks at top speed, and then two weeks at top speed”, he concluded, referring to the three weeks remaining before the first of the two-rounds of the election and the fortnight that then follows before the final play-off, to more cheers and flag waving.
Previous reports in the series:
French elections in images: far-right candidate Le Pen hounded by an opposite 'front'
French elections in images: firebrand Mélenchon calls for 'civic insurrection'
French elections in images: Sarkozy rallies the faithful in Villepinte
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- Patrick Artinian is a Paris-based freelance photographer and a regular contributor to Mediapart, as well as French daily Le Monde, weekly magazine VSD and sports daily L’Equipe. He has previously covered major international events, including the 1989 Armenian earthquake disaster, the 1991 famine disaster in Sudan and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, in 1993. A member of the Paris photo agency Contact Press Images since 1995, he is currently involved in an extensive photo documentary of contemporary US society.
