France" "
The ballot has shown the attachment of the French to republican values, but people have no faith in the political class, says the bishop of Fréjus-Tolon, stronghold of Le Pen. Following the victory of Jacques Chirac in the run-off for the presidential elections in France, we interviewed Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon, the region in which the National Front candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, obtained 25-30% of the vote. What do you think of the election results? “The second round in the presidential elections was transformed into a plebiscite to stop the advance of the far right. This democratic re-awakening testifies, in my view, to the attachment of the French to republican values and the rejection of any form of extremism. There aren’t ‘five million fascists’ in France, just as there aren’t ‘three million revolutionaries of the far left’. There are, for the most part, people who feel betrayed, who are afraid, who feel disenchanted in their own ideals, and who expressed their grievances, their sense of loss and their anxieties in the first round of the elections. It was undoubtedly an extraordinary rejection of the whole of the political class to whom the French had entrusted the management of their common good. These results must lead our rulers to understand better what is represented by the nobility and the difficulty of any government. They must be shown how best to respect the common good. Nor must they succumb to corporativism or the demagogic pandering to the private interests of this or that pressure group, but aim at the democratic search of the common interest”. What’s at stake in the forthcoming legislative elections? “The right to life, the right to the respect for human dignity, work, freedom of expression, equality between the sexes. These are issues often fragmented and reinterpreted according to the circumstances or situation of the moment. We need to re-discover social points of reference inherited from history and ways of promoting life in common. How then should we tackle our everyday life and the various problems and abuses by which it is bedevilled? We may think, for instance, of things like double parking, the illegal dumping of waste, graffiti, tax evasion, clandestine work… Errors we all commit, sometimes with the encouragement or complicity of those who are charged with the job of seeing to it that the general interest be respected. Is it only common sense to recall that ‘whoever steals an egg today, will steal a chicken tomorrow’? Unfortunately the French themselves are in no position to teach their politicians what to do, since day after day they too succumb to the temptation to cultivate their own immediate interests, to the detriment of the common good”. What would you like to ask the politicians called to exercise responsibility in the new government? “First, I would ask them to heighten the civic consciousness of a new generation of men and women. Second, I would ask them never to forget that they are only there ‘on trust’ and ‘at the service’ of the community. They also need to place citizens before their own responsibilities, without thinking that it is possible to control everything at the central level”. And what would you ask of the citizens worried about the future of their country? “I would like to tell them that they have politicians who resemble them but that it is too simple to seek scapegoats among them. Everyone is personally responsible for the deviations and abuses of the system. That’s why citizens must devote themselves more actively to the life of their neighbourhood, of their suburb, and take courageous decisions, such as renouncing inherited privileges that block any kind of progress. The future of our country is increasingly bound up with the future of the world. The challenge we face is that of bequeathing a better world to our children”.
