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French Political System: Difference between revisions
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Presidents of the Fifth Republic (starting from 1959) are as follows:
[[File:DeGaulle_2801.jpg|frame]]
* '''Charles de Gaulle''' (1959-1969): As a general, he became the chief of the Free French Forces during [[World War 2]] after the fall of France. Talked on British radio on June 18th 1940 about fighting on. Needless to say, he became a hero of [[La Résistance]]. Became President due to his being rock-like and firm in the face of the [[The French Colonial Empire|Algerian War]], although it turned out that he wasn't firm and rock-like the way his supporters wanted, and in fact gave Algeria its independence. [[
[[File:Pompidou_9733.jpg|frame]]
* '''Georges Pompidou''' (1969-1974): He is mostly famous for his huge eyebrows and keeping his cigarette in his mouth when in public, which was a good thing for political cartoonists. Ironically, he didn't die from throat cancer as one would assume, but from [[wikipedia:Waldenstr%C3%B6m macroglobulinemia|Waldenström's disease]]. Pompidou was less (''way'' less) hostile to the European Economic Community than de Gaulle, his good relations with Chancellor Willy Brandt helping the emergence of the famed Franco-German cooperation, and he broke with his predecessor's obstructionism by voting in favour of the UK's membership. On the domestic front, he spent his first year in office dealing with the devaluation of the franc after the paralysis of May 1968, and his last year saw the long post-war boom (or the ''trente gloriouses'', "thirty glorious years" [[Non-Indicative Name|despite only lasting from 1945 to 1973]]) sputter to a halt in the midst of the 1973 oil crisis.
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* '''Parti Socialiste''' (PS): The main left-wing party, currently in power, created in 1969. <ref>Initially there was one big socialist party called SFIO (''Section française de l'internationale ouvrière'', French Section of the Workers' International), then after the Tours congress in 1920, a majority joined the Third Communist International (read: the USSR) and became the French Communist Party, while the rest stayed away from it and became the Socialist Party in 1969. That's a very breif summary but we won't go into the details of the French left's tumultuous and convoluted history here</ref> Although it implemented a few acclaimed social reforms while in power (like the abolition of death penalty, the Minimum Income of Insertion, the Tax on Large Fortunes or the 35 hours working week), since the mid-80s, its economic views have progressively switched to the right, making it some kind of French Democratic Party. It antagonized many left-wing voters after most of its deputies and senators abstained for the vote on the Lisbon Treaty (2008) and more recently the vote on the European Stability Mechanism (March 2012), both of which they could have blocked. Currently led by Martine Aubry… [[Big Screwed-Up Family|or by God only knows who.]]
** Their candidate for 2012 was ''François Hollande'' (deputy of the Corrèze department). He scored 28% in the first round and won the second round with 51,5%.
* '''Mouvement Démocrate''' (MoDem): the main centrist party, founded by the former lead of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), François Bayrou (deputy of Pyrénées-Atlantique). Economically mildly liberal, it created a surprise in 2007 with a score of 18,5%, [[One
** Their candidate for 2012 was ''François Bayrou'' once more. He scored 9.5%.
* '''Debout la République''' (DLR, Stand Up Republic): Formerly a trend within the UMP, led by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, it seceded and became an independent party in 2007, to represent the Gaullist right-wing. They defend a Keynesian capitalism against a deregulated, financial one, as well as a confederal model for the European Union. They also promote the Euro as a common reference currency while getting back national currencies in parallel.
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