Paris
Will Paris become the first large city in France (indeed, the first major city or national capital anywhere in the world) to elect an openly gay candidate as mayor–the Socialist Bertrand Delanoë? Beyond that question, highly symbolic for same-sexers everywhere, the two-stage Paris elections, which take place on March 11 and 18, will have far-reaching consequences. If the left succeeds in winning the City of Light for the first time ever, that could presage a national victory in France’s presidential and legislative elections, to be held in May 2002.
The right has maintained hegemony in Paris since the first municipal elections in 1977, when Jacques Chirac–then president of the neo-Gaullist RPR–led the right to victory. He remained mayor of Paris until his election as President in 1995, when he dictated the selection of his successor–the current mayor, Jean Tiberi, Chirac’s first deputy mayor for nearly two decades.
But the unbroken succession in this city, dominated for the past twenty-four years by la droite chiraquienne (the Chirac conservative majority), has suddenly and dramatically deteriorated following an avalanche of financial and electoral scandals. Mayor Tiberi is at the center of accusations concerning, among other things, the secret financing of political parties through a highly organized system of corrupt rakeoffs and kickbacks on contracts, filling the electoral rolls with phantom voters, illegally allocating low-rent apartments in city-owned housing (reserved for the economically disadvantaged) to political cronies and the families of elected officials and giving hundreds of no-show municipal jobs to full-time workers for the RPR and its campaigns. These scandals now threaten to undo Chirac himself, a danger underscored by the recent arrest of Chirac’s former municipal chief of staff.
Aside from the scandals, the right’s management of the city has also been sharply criticized. Paris is in danger of becoming a city-museum: Rents have skyrocketed, and the lack of subsidized housing for low- and middle-income families has forced many of them to move to less costly suburban developments with onerous commutes. While tourism continues to increase, Paris has serious air pollution and has not modernized or improved its public transportation or its noncommercial recreation facilities (especially for the young, hardest hit by unemployment).
All this means the left has an excellent chance of winning the municipal elections. Its leading candidate, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (number two in Prime Minister Lionel Jospin’s government and the man in charge of the French economy), was forced to withdraw and lost his ministry after being tainted by yet another money scandal. After much internecine maneuvering, Jospin’s Socialist Party finally settled on Delanoë. A little-known senator at the time of his designation, with a reputation as an unimaginative apparatchik and Jospin loyalist, Delanoë chose to make his homosexuality public during a 1998 television appearance. His matter-of-fact manner in coming out made few waves at the time, but since then he has enjoyed the media’s favor, and–thanks to the Ubuesque situation in which Paris’s right finds itself–his popularity has steadily increased in the opinion polls. And he has secured the endorsement of all the smaller parties in Jospin’s “plural left” coalition, including the Communists (except for the Greens, who are nonetheless expected to support Delanoë in the second round of municipal voting). Within the city’s sizable gay population, Delanoë has broad support, all the more so because, in contrast to his right-wing opponents, he has been a supporter of the pact of civil solidarity (PACS) for unmarried couples. Passed by the left-controlled National Assembly in 1999, the PACS recognizes and gives a large number of social and fiscal rights to domestic partnerships, whether homo- or heterosexual.
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The conservative RPR, recognizing that Tiberi was politically bankrupt, dropped him as its mayoral candidate in favor of Philippe Séguin, a former party president and minister under Chirac. But even though Séguin is an RPR heavyweight with a reputation for intellectual honesty, his rigidity and independence (in the past he’s feuded with Chirac) render him unsuited for the kinds of concessions necessary to unify the fractious Paris right. Meanwhile Mayor Tiberi, despite being disavowed by the RPR, has maintained his candidacy for re-election as an independent and is running a slate of candidates for City Council. In addition, the two extreme-right parties are running their own slates.
Delanoë’s ambitious campaign proposals include making Paris “a model of democracy” (through the creation of neighborhood and youth councils and an official forum for civic organizations, the institution of referendums by petition and, above all, a guarantee of “real financial transparency” in government); building 5,000 new low-income and student housing units a year; ending the policy of “autos first” by building a new tramway to encircle Paris, creating 300 kilometers of new bus lanes, more car-free zones for pedestrians, cyclists and roller skaters, and improved river transport on the Seine; providing more daycare centers and facilities for the aged and handicapped; and doubling the city’s cultural budget. He also promises halfway houses for gay kids rejected by their parents, giving gay organizations equal access to the subsidies the city already provides to civic groups, creating a new gay archive/research center and waging aggressive city-sponsored campaigns against antigay discrimination and AIDS.
However, even if Delanoë wins, as now seems probable, giving Paris back its former demographic mixture and improving its quality of life–especially for those of modest means–won’t be easy, given a city budget that has been fiscally unsound for many years. Moreover, Delanoë’s personal shortcomings continue to raise doubts, including on the left: Can a party workhorse with no management experience, nominated almost by default for his mayoral post, innovatively lead the first city of France?
Still, changing the political control of Paris–and ending what Le Nouvel Observateur has dubbed “the corrupt Chirac-Tiberi system”–is a top priority, one that could lead to the right’s (and Chirac’s) defeat next year. And if this permits one of the world’s greatest cities to elect a mayor who is openly gay, why not gamble on his success? Frédéric Martel
