French writer and poet Michel Houellebecq’s controversial, yet mordantly funny, 2015 novel Soumission ( Submission, in English) depicts the age-old dilemma of French society. And it is a prophecy about the 2022 French presidential elections that portrays the sort of Islamophobia in present day French society, which is a carry-over effect of colonising north-east Africa.
In Houellebecq’s darkly comic masterpiece, that mixes fiction with reality, France finds itself amid a political crisis in 2022. The rise in popularity of the leader of the National Front (a far-right party), Marine Le Pen, is perceived. To resist Ms. Le Pen, the Socialist Party allies with the newly formed Muslim Brotherhood Party, with the additional support of the right-wing Union for a Popular Movement. Someone named Mohammed Ben-Abbes becomes the president and Islamic law is instituted in France thereafter. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, antisemitism spreads, and university professors are given irresistible offers were they to convert to Islam. President Ben-Abbes campaigns to extend the European Union like a new Roman Empire by including North Africa, with now-Islamicised France at its lead.
Real-life politicians such as Marine Le Pen and François Hollande are the characters of ‘Soumission’. But not a future leader, then 37 years old, named Emmanuel Macron. Mr. Macron’s party, the La République En Marche! would be formed in 2016, and he would run for the presidential election the next year, to become the youngest French head of the state since Napoleon.
Under the Fifth Republic constitution, France has a two-round voting system. If no candidate gets 50% of the first-round vote on April 10 — which the polls suggest is likely — the top two candidates will contest in a second-round run-off on April 24. The French election is a tussle between the right-wing and left-wing parties, including the far-right and extreme left. This election campaign, however, has been the most far right in France’s modern history.
The themes and candidates
Insecurity, crime, and social inequality related to immigration are Ms. Le Pen’s preferred themes. She has promised a referendum on immigration and a rewrite of the Constitution to ensure “France for the French”. With a focus on the rising energy prices due to the Ukraine crisis, Ms. Le Pen has been trying to shrug off her past connections to the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
Then there is the former TV pundit, Éric Zemmour, dubbed ‘the French Donald Trump’, of the Reconquête party, who is known for his provocations on Islam, immigration, and women. Raphaël Llorca, the author of The New Masks of the Far-Right, a book on Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Zemmour, thinks that the tone of Ms. Le Pen’s campaign was deliberately different this year — she wants to anaesthetise society’s reflexes against the far right. Interestingly, the radicality of Mr. Zemmour has softened Ms. Le Pen’s image and has possibly made her acceptable to a wide range of the electorate.
Valerie Pécresse is the candidate for the centre-right Les Républicains. Ms. Pécresse, who described herself as “one-third Margaret Thatcher and two-thirds Angela Merkel”, also condemns the massive influx of immigrants and the growth of Islamism in France. The left-wing populist veteran leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, sees himself as a “shrewd tortoise”, overtaking some of the hares in the race. However, it is unlikely he will create magic in this election.
Macron’s tenure
In 2017, the world witnessed the meteoric rise of a politician when the Élysée Palace welcomed its youngest-ever resident. Mr. Macron is viewed as far more of a statesman than the others during wartime in Europe. Also, he has had a significant role in maintaining the unity and the power of the European Union in global politics, especially after the exit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel from the helm of Germany. But, Mr. Macron is no wildcard entrant in 2022, and his ‘magic’ has to be tested through the lens of his performances. He underwent many testing moments during his first term of presidency. There was first the Gilet Jaunes or the Yellow Vest protests that began in November 2018, over Mr. Macron’s decision to hike the diesel taxes. Then came the novel coronavirus pandemic, a defining factor for all the incumbents in their re-election bids.
Mr. Macron’s goal to bring France’s unemployment rate to 7% by the end of this five-year mandate in 2022 was hit by COVID-19. The pandemic brought his approval rating below 40% in 2021. Mr. Macron set himself up for conflict with those who refused to be vaccinated, “ramping up his rhetoric against France’s minority of non-vaccinated people — less than 10% of the population — in part as a way of setting the political battle lines for the election”, as The Guardian reported.
Many critics have seen Mr. Macron’s first term as “gloomy” for French Muslims. Laïcité — the French brand of secularism — attracted widespread discussions with the adoption of the ‘Separatism law’ in the summer of 2021. Many believe this is a political ploy to lure right-wing voters towards Mr. Macron.
What is unpredictable
Ms. Le Pen is Mr. Macron’s closest rival ahead of the first round this time around. The combined vote share of Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Zemmour is predicted to be more than that of Mr. Macron in the first round. Nobody knows how the electorate would behave when it will have only two choices, particularly in the complex social structure of present-day France, in the backdrop of the pandemic and Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Historically, three winners of the first-round lost in the second-round of the French elections — François Mitterrand in 1974, Giscard d’Estaing in 1981, and Lionel Jospin in 1995. As Ms. Le Pen is gathering momentum, the opinion polls predict her following behind Mr. Macron but within the allowable margin of error.
What would happen if there is a high rate of abstention among left-wing or centrist voters? In a bid to galvanise his supporters as well as undecided voters, Mr. Macron has warned of the risk of a Brexit-style upset as polls show the race between him and Ms. Le Pen tightening for the crucial second-round run-off.
Houellebecq certainly got the pulse of French society and its politics, whatever be the election outcome. Just a few months before 2022 elections, Houellebecq came up with his new novel, ‘Anéantir’ (Annihilate, Destroy or Obliterate), written in the backdrop of the 2027 elections. Well, in ‘Anéantir’, Mr. Macron — while not named — is perceived to be the winner in 2022. What if Houellebecq now writes a sequel in the backdrop of 2032? A now 44-year-old former investment banker named Emmanuel Macron and his centrist politics would certainly play a balancing act in the storyline. Before predicting the nature of ‘Submission’, and/or ‘Destruction’ it is possibly wise to wait until the 2022 ballots are counted though!
Atanu Biswas is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata
