The second debate in France’s wild presidential campaign on Tuesday night was touted as unprecedented, reports FRANCE 24.
The contest marked the first in French television history to feature every candidate in the race before the pack is pared down to two finalists on April 23.
But nearly four hours later, well after midnight Wednesday Paris time, with all 11 candidates having spoken for about 18 minutes each in an interminable cacophony, it was clear why the enterprise had never been tried. The open contest on the BFM TV and CNEWS networks, while laudable in principle, was absurd in effect with so much on the line. And the top candidates, many of whom have been openly lukewarm about contesting a similar third broadcast on April 20, might be wise to stay away.
The campaign’s first debate, on March 20, had featured only the five frontrunners and been an eminently watchable heavyweight battle. Criticised as undemocratic, that contest at least enjoyed a certain logic. Combined, those five participants -- National Front spitfire Marine Le Pen, independent-centrist frontrunner Emmanuel Macron, embattled conservative François Fillon, hardline Socialist nominee Benoît Hamon and far-leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon -- are polling at more than 92 percent of the vote.
Tuesday night’s contest added six more hopefuls, five of whom are polling between zero and one percent on voter surveys. The six new contestants were allotted more than half the debate’s speaking time, égalité oblige, drowning out the candidates with a real shot at the prize. Two of those underdogs -- Nathalie Arthaud of Workers’ Struggle and Philippe Poutou of the New Anti-Capitalist Party -- are rival far-left leaders both labelled Trotskyists, suggesting they cannot even agree on Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, never mind French policy.
The so-called “little candidates” came out swinging. “I am a man who is angry against all of these heirs of a financial system who are here and who did not want to take the bull by the horns,” Solidarity and Progress candidate Jacques Cheminade said during his opening remarks. Cheminade scored 0.25 percent (89,545 votes) during his last bid for the French presidency, in 2012.
Polling at or below one percent does tend to make the prospect of being held accountable after winning office a moot point, affording the combative minnows a certain leeway with reality and straw-man proposals that can muddle the debate. Self-styled Frexit candidate François Asselineau pushed Tuesday to deploy Article 50 directly, yanking France out of Europe without bothering to call a referendum; Poutou stumped for disarming the police.