France had its first round of presidential elections on Sunday. There were ten candidates and the two who got the most votes will face each other in a runoff on May 6th. The winner of that will be the president for the next five years. There were no surprises in the fact of which two candidates made it to the next round. The current President placed slightly behind the candidate from the other major French political party. What surprised many was the third place candidate. She had about 20% of the vote and is far right winged. She became the leader of her party after her father stepped down and won a higher percentage of the vote than he did in the 2002 Presidential campaign against Jacques Chirac. The current President has dunked his feet in her pond, and well, his results have been swimming. He even adapted some of her ideas he first called “frivolous”. All of this has completely mortified Christophe as it shows the tendency of what could come to France. I pointed out that the current President came in second in this round and the other candidate doesn’t pander to these ideas, appears to be more tolerant, and doesn’t support laws that only benefit the extremely wealthy; polls are putting him ahead in the second round. Christophe still grunted; he was clearly upset about the voting results and what that says about the French and their ideas.
I tried to stay more positive this weekend. Dodging in between raindrops I weeded the saffron, strawberries, and raspberries. We also finally got the potatoes planted, which hasn’t been an easy feat with the daily dose of afternoon rain that has been falling for the last few weeks. We might now know what’s to come politically, but this way, I think at least we’ll eat well.
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