MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Marie Le Pen European victory rattles France; calls for dissolution of national assembly
France suffered a political earthquake on Sunday as the far-right National Front (FN) topped the polls in European elections with an unprecedented haul of one in every four votes cast, exit polls indicated. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rulesSo 25% of the roughly 45% of France's voters voted for Le Pen's party and she thinks that is a mandate to dissolve the National Assembly?
May 26th, 2014 - 09:37 am - Link - Report abuse 0So 11.25% of France's voters, which equates to a lot less than 11% of France's population.
Gawd save us from another power hungry deluded politician from the extreme end of the spectrum.
If people want to play numbers, governments should make voting a legal requirement.
May 26th, 2014 - 10:47 am - Link - Report abuse 0If you dont want to vote, spoil your paper, but you must turn up and cast something.
Even waitrose has a vote for what charity gets funding and you drop your token in as you leave the checkout.
I think if everyone in france voted, the FN would have seen a greater percentage, but as with many countries, people are fed up with the EU, but cant be bothered as they dont feel like there is a way to escape.
Well there is, and finally countries are waking up to it.
im english, but love old france, not the euro france its becoming, but the old proud france
Vulcanbomber
May 26th, 2014 - 10:55 am - Link - Report abuse 0I live in a country with compulsory voting and I fully support the idea as a civic responsibility. As a society we expect our government to have mandatory commitments and I think that society as a whole should also have some mandatory commitments - one of those being voting.
However far from increasing the extremes of politics, mandatory voting usually leads to more centrist parties as they have to expand their appeal to court as many voters as possible, which is not usually possible by taking extreme positions.
A better system would be to only allow voting by people who net pay into the gov't for a minimum amount of time maybe 3-5yrs.
May 26th, 2014 - 11:59 am - Link - Report abuse 0You should only be allowed a say in how you are being managed if you pay to play.
Otherwise the welfare recipients will eventually break the system as we are seeing all over the world. With Argentina and Venezuela the perfect examples.
@1
May 26th, 2014 - 12:18 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yes but statistically speaking you don’t know how if the 65% will correlate their voting patterns with the 45% that did vote. It really depends
This is the kind of attitude and feeling about immigration that I talked about half a year ago that Europe was sick and tired of and the PC liberal bunch was all in “La la land”
I agree that voting should be a legal requirement (I live in the UK) but as far as pay to play goes forget it, people suffered too much to give everyone the vote to then have it taken away simply because you dont have a job!
May 26th, 2014 - 12:49 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I am now disabled and unable to work, so should I loose my rights simply because I am Ill? What about those who have just turned 18 and are in education, should they not be allowed to vote? or school leavers who have not worked for your minimum time limit! Hell why not return to the old system of only those who own a house should have the right to vote. I dont know about the fight to be allowed to vote in the US but I do know that here in the UK it was a long and bitter struggle.
@1, 3 What do you think? FREEDOM!!! But compulsory voting? A carry-over from “the old days”? Off the bunk. Fold the blankets. Be “friendly” with your cellmate. Empty the slop-bucket. Vote!
May 26th, 2014 - 12:51 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Maybe there could be a solution if people could vote for the guy down the road giving away free food. Kangaroos, wallabies, dingos. The argie model.
See, the concept is that if you think all the candidates, or their parties, are crap, you don't vote. So, on the figure I researched, 58.7% of Europe's population reckoned the suggested candidates/parties were crap. Isn't that a “vote”? Equivalent to “none of the above”. You don't get this “will of the people” thing, do you? “And the result this year is that 58.7% of the people WON'T”. Tired of the EU trying to run our country! But there are some who continue to work toward making the EU intelligent or destroying it.
@4 But add to that that you have to “belong”. Arrived 5 years ago from Somalia, Mexico, Nigeria, Guatemala, India, Brazil etc. Nope. You need another 40 years in full employment, paying taxes, no criminal record.
6. Being disabled doesn't require you to be on welfare but if you are Yes absolutely you lose your right to vote along with every other type of person you named. If you are in school, not earning, not paying into the system you don't get a vote. It is very simple to understand and equitable.
May 26th, 2014 - 01:02 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I don't like property rights ownership as a barrier because you are forcing someone to do something they may not want to do.
It should be a privilege to vote not a right.
well!! well!! The extreme right is making a come back in Europe.Ukip,Le Pen and even a neo nazi makes it it the EU parliament.Those who do not know their history are bound to repeat it.......ummmmmmm
May 26th, 2014 - 01:15 pm - Link - Report abuse 09
May 26th, 2014 - 01:20 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yep, history is about to repeat itself… This is the fourth Reich that has being on the making for the last 20 years and last night suffered its first Stalingrad.
There was a time where countries that were sovereign and free to set their own laws and immigration policies.
There is a sense that gov't has too much influence in people's day to day lives. We are going through this in the USA too. I hope the next Prez is able to kill the beast of gov't and get rid of the massive bureaucracies that are killing my country.
May 26th, 2014 - 01:27 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Obama's overreach is exactly what we needed to bring an end to the invasive disease of Progressivism for another 20-30 yrs. Just like Carter did.
The way I see it is that America is in a way destined to be burdened with at least a medium size state forever.
May 26th, 2014 - 01:37 pm - Link - Report abuse 0It’s just too big to avoid a fairly large component of the Federal gov't.
There is no excuses for other countries which are much smaller and don’t have any need to have carriers and bases all round the world to have high degrees of State involvement in the economy.
What a good idea remove the vote from the unemployed and the disabled, what next special educational camps for them? after all they are such a drain on society, why not go the whole hog and have selective euthanasia! Once you start to take away civil liberties away from one group it is not long before you then find another to pick on. Sounds rather familiar to those who know there history dont it.
May 26th, 2014 - 03:31 pm - Link - Report abuse 0It is very simple if they want to have a vote don't take welfare and pay in U$1.
May 26th, 2014 - 03:43 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Otherwise they don't have the right to tell the gov't how to spend MY money.
They have the right to tell them how to spend theirs..which is none.
It is simple and equitable.
If you don't like it get a job moocher.
I don’t understand why Nigel Farage doesn’t get along with Le Pen though.
May 26th, 2014 - 03:50 pm - Link - Report abuse 0They share the same views about the EU and immigration but I think in economical approach UKIP is more free market than the FN.
It doesn’t matter, the votes in Strasbourg will be anti- federation, anti expansion of the EU and anti bureaucracy. From there on each country can adopt and persue the policy it sees fit by traditional national democracy.
Here in Uruguay we pay (the owners of property, not renters of property) something colloquially known as Baby School Tax: the ring fenced money for the pre-school children.
May 26th, 2014 - 05:24 pm - Link - Report abuse 0It isn’t much (to us) only UYU$1,423 (US$63) and it is 9% more than last year: this is the third time we have paid it. We don’t have any children here so why should we pay it and not the renters of property who do have children?
Are we to be so insular that we begrudge the little ones their school, of course not?
BUT, and there’s always a BUT, I would remove the Social payments to the so called “poor” in a flash. I have learnt firsthand that this scheme is not the way to improve their long-term wellbeing and seriously depletes the ability of low paid employed people (like teachers FFS!) to see to the real needs of their own children.
Complicated, isn’t it? Especially when we expect illiterate and innumerate people to run the country like we have here.
LOL Moocher oh how colonial of you, you dont know me from Adam. I have quite possibly worked a lot longer and harder than you have your entire life, I have paid my share into the system and served my country. How about you, what you ever done other than preach at people you dont know LOL Oh and by the way we dont use US $ in the UK, might come as a bit of a shock to you but the entire world isnt american LOL
May 26th, 2014 - 07:12 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The French have voted, 25% voted for her,
May 26th, 2014 - 07:55 pm - Link - Report abuse 0hollande back in third,
irrelevant if one agrees or disagrees, their country , their vote,
perhaps the French to, should listen to the people,
they want their country back and their borders,
The EU is not what the people want,
they want a trading block, countries who want to trade together,
they DONT want indoctrination , a united states of Europe, an unelected president,,
these politicians need to wake up and listen to the people,
or soddy offy..
just an independent view..
18 Briton
May 26th, 2014 - 09:01 pm - Link - Report abuse 0People should not be afraid of the government, the government should be afraid of the people
How true President Hollande, how very true............
It is anti-austerity sentiment that is driving this anti-EU backlash. Spain, France, and Greece have shown this.
May 26th, 2014 - 10:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0They want their national sovereignty back to enact even more of the socialist spending that has put them in a bad hole in the first place!
This wasn't a vote against socialist bureaucracy, it was a vote to continue it more locally! Full steam ahead! Borrow more money! Even better, tax the rich, tax the rich!!!
France elected Hollande with all of his socialist promises, which were hollow. Now, he's a bum, just like Sarkozy was before him. And now, the EU is a bum too!
They're all saying, “Borrow more money, borrow more money, we have rights you know!”
The U.S. people refuse to stop government borrowing for the same reasons. It has a reasonably decent education system, as does the EU.
But if they think that other people (of the future) should pay for their lifestyle, that doesn't seem like they are too well educated at all. Just really irresponsible.
Thinking that money just grows on trees isn't overly brilliant either.
It doesn't seem like a new day in the EU to me. And how are these new political parties going to pay for the old days?
Spain doesn't want to be a German colony. OK, don't be. They should just fork over all the money and shut up! Right? After all, that is what human justice requires, right?
@4, When 'push' comes to 'shove', gotta agree with Yankeeboy ...you want to play, then pay. This is one of the current problems in Brazil. The so-called “bolsa-familia”, a government handout to the poor, which has virtually no pre-qualification worth talking of to become eligible, and which strangely, seems to be producing a new middle-class - by the 'government's' definition, well understood - is just another form of buying votes. The recipients of this handout, many of which regard it as their 'retirement' pension, don't produce one bloody cent, yet they have the right to vote, and their vote carries the same weight as that of a person who pays a lot of income tax. And when you consider that about 15 million families (located mainly in the north and northeast regions - the poorest) receive the 'bolsa-família' , you are talking of at least 30 million votes....
May 26th, 2014 - 10:28 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Due to this disgusting, immoral situation, one congressman (with 'cojones' ), presented a project in Congress, intended to temporarily remove the right to vote from any person, if and while they are living on a handout...obviously, not applicable to those who have paid their dues and are now legally retired. Guess what ? the current government refuses to discuss it in Congress, and uses every tactic in the book to delay a vote indefinitely.
Therefore, I am a firm believer that you need to EARN the right to vote...
In the U.S. the “real” vote is the campaign contribution. That is the “vote” that a politician listens to.
May 26th, 2014 - 10:39 pm - Link - Report abuse 0“Earners” can make campaign contributions, and they are the ones who are really voting. They have influence.
I think that “handout electioneering” is counter productive to a a country's well being. If handout people didn't get to vote, it would not be a problem.
But, if you don't get to vote, the politicians will completely ignore you. That is no good either.
Hahahaha
May 27th, 2014 - 02:39 am - Link - Report abuse 0Removing the vote from the poor.... You guys know how far back that is in time?
Hahahaha
Marie Le Pen's party hates Jews...
May 27th, 2014 - 07:59 am - Link - Report abuse 0That's probably why The French get on so well with argentina huh Stevie???
Conqs
May 27th, 2014 - 12:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Thanks for your reply. It made no sense. Australia is probably more democratic and prosperous that the UK. Compulsory voting works for us and does nothing to limit our freedoms.
As per usual, most of your post was the rantings of a drunkard.
Tool
May 27th, 2014 - 01:45 pm - Link - Report abuse 0France get along well with Argentina, you say?
France being Le Pen and Argentina being who?
@23 Stevie, your “Removing the vote from the poor....” has, once again, missed the point. By “temporarily” removing the right to vote from anyone who has made the government handout a way-of-life, will stimulate them to get back into the work market and be productive. If they'd rather not, then it's their problem. As I pointed out, the great majority - about 95% - of the recipients of the “Bolsa Família” in Brazil , have absolutely no intention of looking for work ever again, and in order to guarantee their lazy life, they'll keep on voting for the party who gave it to them, regardless of that party's corruption etc...
May 27th, 2014 - 03:40 pm - Link - Report abuse 0But, as you defend the vote for the poor, regardless of whether they are a burden or an asset to society, it is safe to conclude that you are poor.
27
May 27th, 2014 - 04:17 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The problem with that theory is that VAT must be eliminated for it to apply.
Even in Argentina people who depend on welfare are paying back a much higher % of their income in VAT than other classes.
So everybody contributes… The problem is that not many from the private sector.
I think that before cutting on civil rights to a vote a lot more should be done about putting limitations on people who apply and run for public office instead.
You must have worked at LEAST 5 or 7 years in the private sector and made a living of it.
Physiological and IQ tests.
19@
May 27th, 2014 - 06:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0I agree.
@ 28 CabezaDura2
May 28th, 2014 - 11:08 am - Link - Report abuse 0“You must have worked at LEAST 5 or 7 years in the private sector and made a living of it. Physiological and IQ tests.”
Excellent idea but it has the same problem as the other suggestions that would affect the incumbents on the gravy train.
In Uruguay there are a number of DOCTORS who are politicians, most of them Marxists prats. Even the forthcoming president (perhaps, it seems there might just be a shakeup) is an oncologist.
We must never lose sight of the fact that even intelligent people are sometimes stupid, it’s about poor decision making and we are stuffed with them in Uruguay.
CabezaDura2@28...to simplify what I'm trying to get at, let's draw the line at who pays INCOME TAX and who doesn't, to determine whether you are a productive citizen (legally retired, counts as well) and have earned the right to vote. In it's most simplest form, take a residential Condominium, if you don't pay your monthly dues, you cannot vote at the meetings... in other words, to have an active voice, you need to contribute.
May 28th, 2014 - 04:59 pm - Link - Report abuse 0If you contribute to an unequal society you should furthermore be guillotined on a public square.
May 29th, 2014 - 01:30 pm - Link - Report abuse 0The closest one...
@32 Stevie mongrel, you lost a good opportunity to keep quiet...
May 29th, 2014 - 05:41 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Commenting for this story is now closed.
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