Robert Ménard, co-founder of the renowned NGO Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières), which has mounted a fierce global campaign over almost a quarter of a century to promote freedom of expression and to defend journalists from persecution, was last weekend elected mayor of Béziers, a large town in southern France. But Ménard’s political ascension has proved to be a severe embarrassment for the NGO, for he was elected with the full backing of France’s far-right Front National party. With the help of Ménard’s former colleagues, Marine Turchi traces the bizarre path of the admired and reviled maverick activist whose early political affiliation was with a French Trotskyist party.
For the first time, the battle to be the next mayor of Paris is shaping up to be an exclusively female affair, with four women candidates due to stand.
