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Showing posts from May 11, 2017

THE FRENCH ELECTION AND WHAT IT MEANS TO DEMOCRACY

Emmanuel Macron, a win for Western democracy Vive la démocratie française! Liberal democrats throughout Europe and around the world breathed a collective sigh of relief this past weekend after French voters overwhelmingly chose against the far-right, anti-European Union project of extreme right-wing nationalist Marine Le Pen. But while initial numbers demonstrated her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, to have won a decisive landslide victory, deeper analysis leaves room for grave concern about where the tides of French democracy will go from here and about the trends among French voters that may well reflect those emerging in the rest of Europe and, indeed, the West as well. First of all, it’s important to note not only who voted for Macron and Le Pen, but also who didn’t.  About nine percent of those who voted in Sunday’s presidential election cast either blank or spoiled ballots. For the most part, these were probably not erroneous votes, but purposely adulterated or uncompleted