2007 French Presidential Elections
French Listening Comprehension
Study Guide
Take a look at the following for help with any vocabulary that you might not have understood in
the report on the 2007 French presidential elections, then take
the test.
| Vocabulary | |
| d'ores et déjà | already |
| s'effectuer | to take place |
| éparpillement | scattering, dispersal |
| un garde-fou | safeguard |
| infamant | shameful, derogatory, defamatory |
| prétendre à | to aspire to (note that the English word "pretend" is a false cognate) |
| prévu | planned, forecast |
| recensé | registered |
| repoussé | pushed back, postponed |
| PS, UMP | French acronyms |
| Notes | |
| 2 rounds | There are two rounds in most French elections. All candidates take part in round one, and if no one has an absolute majority, then the two leading candidates face off in the deciding second round. |
| 5 élections | Of these, the least known are the cantonales. These are elections for the conseils généraux, the local councils which sit in each of France's 96 départements (not counting the four overseas departments). Départements are themselves divided into cantons consisting of a number of communes, and each canton sends a single representative to the conseil général. Altogether there are 4,039 cantons in France,which means there are on average about 40 councillors on a conseil général. Councillors are chosen for six-year terms, and every three years there are elections for half the conseils. Their powers were slightly extended in 2004 and now cover local roads, social housing, and some welfare programs. The conseils généraux are not to be confused with the more important conseils régionaux, which sit in each of France's 22 regions. The last elections for the conseils régionaux took place in 2004, when the left won a sweeping victory and a certain Ségolène Royal was chosen to head the conseil régional in Poitou-Charentes. The next regional elections are in 2010. Of the other two elections postponed to 2008 in order to avoid la cacophonie électorale, the municipals are for councils and mayors in the 36,500 or so communes. These were last held in 2001, when the right made large gains across the country but lost control of Paris. The Senate elections take place every three years, and until now, a third of the 331 Senate seats were up for replacement each election. The last election was in 2004. Now that the mandate of senators has been reduced from nine years to six, half the seats will be up for replacement each election. The Senate elections are indirect. It is not the people as a whole who vote but around 150,000 grands électeurs, who are, in the main, conseillers from all tiers of municipal, departmental, and regional government, as well as deputies in the National Assembly. Critics say the indirect election system is strongly biased in favor of rural areas and gives an unfair advantage to the center right, which has controlled the Senate throughout the Fifth Republic. |
| Conseil Constitutionnel | The highest constitutional authority in France, charged with supervising elections and ruling—when consulted—on the conformity of laws and foreign treaties with the 1958 constitution. It consists of nine members appointed for nine-year terms, three by the president, three by the speaker of the Senate, and three by the speaker of the National Assembly. In addition, former presidents of the republic automatically have a seat, though they need not take it. The current president of the Conseil Constitutionnel is Pierre Mazeaud, a loyal ally of President Jacques Chirac and—curiously—the first Frenchman to have climbed Mount Everest. The Conseil Constitutionnel convenes in the Palais Royal near the offices of the Conseil d'État, with which it is not to be confused. The Conseil d'État, with some 300 members, acts as the government's legal adviser as well as France's highest administrative court. |
| Députés | 577 députés are elected in the élections législatives every five years to form the Assemblée nationale. Their role is comparable to Congress in the US and Parliament members in the UK. |
| Jean-Marie Le Pen | The 2002 election—and Le Pen's victory over Jospin in round one—was, of course, a huge shock to the system, but there was never the slightest danger of the far right taking power. In round two Le Pen was trounced by Chirac, who got 82.21% of votes to Le Pen's 17.79%. It is not inconceivable that Le Pen will make it into round two again in the 2007 election, but, as in 2002, he will stand no chance at all in the runoff. |
| Lionel Jospin | The Socialist candidate fell into third place behind Jean-Marie Le Pen, largely because the left-wing vote was spread out among minor candidates. |
| le parrainage | This system goes back to 1962, when President Charles de Gaulle (who had been elected in 1958 by an electoral college) introduced universal suffrage. Intending to winnow out nonserious candidates for the 1965 elections, he set up a requirement that potential candidates must acquire a minimum of 100 signatures from a pool of about 45,000 people, who include the 36,500 mayors of communes, as well as regional and departmental councillors, senators, and National Assembly and European Parliament members. The number of sponsorships was increased in 1976, and to qualify to run in the election today, a candidate must get 500 signatures from at least 30 different departments, with no more than 50 coming from a single department. The far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen is a vocal critic of the system. Because the names of sponsors are made public by the Conseil Constitutionnel, Le Pen says that potential sponsors are reluctant to come forward to support his candidacy, fearing they will receive bad publicity. Le Pen wants sponsors' anonymity to be guaranteed. Even his most virulent critics concede it would be a travesty of democracy if Le Pen is unable to run in 2007. In 2002 he got 16.86% of the vote in round one, beating the hapless Jospin, who came in third. |
| Parti des Travailleurs | The smallest of the three main Trotskyist political parties in France, the other two being the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) and Lutte Ouvrière (LO). The PT is the creation of the shadowy Pierre Boussel, who also goes by the name of Pierre Lambert or simply Lambert. Apparently, Lambert led a schism inside the Fourth International in 1953 and then set up the Organisation Communiste Internationaliste (OCI), which later became part of the PT. Lambert was much in the news in 2001, when it was revealed that then prime minister Lionel Jospin had been a follower of the OCI in the 1960s. Indeed Jospin was said to have joined the Socialist Party as a mole under Lambert's instructions, and only later broken with Trotskyism. This allegation certainly did not do any good for Jospin's presidential election chances in 2002. The PT's candidate in those elections—and today its national secretary—was Daniel Gluckstein, who got a total of 132,868 votes. The LCR and LO did far better, between them getting 2.8 million votes, or 9.97 percent of votes cast. The PT's 2007 candidate, Gerard Schivardi, is totally unknown outside the town of Mailhac in the southern Aude department where he is mayor. |
| 2007 French Presidential Elections French Listening Comprehension Exercise |
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| Listen | Study | Test | ||
| Transcript Translation | ||||
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| Sound files and transcript
were
originally published in Champs-Élysées audiomagazine (read my review) and are used with the permission of Champs-Élysées, Inc. |
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