The Prime Minister's Speech

Here is a ten-minute video featuring Gilbert Collard, deputy from le Gard, member of the Rassemblement Bleu Marine, and one of two victors in the legislative elections from Marine Le Pen's coalition, the other being Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.

Here he discusses two major topics. The first five minutes are devoted to his reaction to the search by the French police of Nicolas Sarkozy's office and apartment, allegedly for the purpose of finding evidence that l'Oréal heiress Liliane Bettancourt had contributed large sums of money to his 2007 presidential campaign.

The story is all over the web. You can read one account in the Wall Street Journal.

In the video, Collard speculates (and repeats that he is speaking as a lawyer) that this police raid may have been timed by the Socialists to coincide with the opening speech in the National Assembly of Interior Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on July 2, since the Bettancourt affair has been going on for many months, and it's a bit late for a search.

The second part of the video, from approximately 5' is devoted to his impressions of the speech:

- A ninety-minute speech. What did you think of it?

- A long soporific flood of words, frankly, a long speech padded with a socio-literary vocabulary, phrases constructed so as to make life seem wonderful, the bad seem good, a sunny life, a sort of impossible dream, it was a unctuous logorrhea, everything is fine, the laws are functioning. Now at one point he spoke of "tools" to jump start competitiveness - I did not see him at any time open a tool box where we could see the tools he would use… He refuses austerity. But this word is everywhere. How can anyone dare to say to the French people whose taxes are going up, and who are going to suffer from increased expenses, that we are not in a period of austerity? All of European politics, all the efforts that were made to keep in place a system that is outdated, obsolete, mean that we will be crushed by heavy taxation as during the days of the "taille" and the "gabelle" (note: these are two taxes from the time of the monarchy)… And people are going to feel it. I did not find, except in wishful thinking, a solution to our problems. At one point he spoke about sovereignty. The prime minister spoke about sovereignty as if he were de Gaulle, as if there were a prompter in the room to whisper cues that he would not have known otherwise. But… where is our sovereignty? Recent European accords have placed our budget almost under EU control, we don't even have enough sovereignty to vote on our own budget! I think he is lying to the peole. We are in a situation of dependency, of austerity, and unfortunately, the solutions proposed are not, to my way of thinking, appropriate.

- Gilbert Collard, was there no measure that pleased you? What about the idea of a proportional system in the next legislative elections?

- Yes, yes. People saw me applaud when they spoke of a law against multiple mandates (note: this refers to a politician who holds more than one position). I am against multiple mandates. And I noticed that very few Socialists applauded, but I wanted to show that I would defend this idea. If something is good for the country, I am not against it. But frankly, the right of foreigners to vote, which is a ploy for getting votes during an election, is something I would be opposed to, because I feel that you do not buy your nationality by paying taxes. I think that the idea of a nation is above all that. Homosexual marriage… now let me say right off that I have a profound respect for all sexual orientations, and I have no critical observations to make, each one lives his sex life as he wishes. But when you have a president who isn't even married, it's really too much to impose a supplementary marriage! And then, all these debates on problems of society come at a moment of crisis, when there are, in my opinion, other problems to solve. In the end, I was not at all satisfied with his words on crime. There was not a word from the prime minister about the two female gendarmes who were killed. Not a word. Don't you think he might have at least said something in his speech? I shouted out, in the amphitheater, "presumption of self-defense for the police!" Because if these women had had this presumption they would have gone to the place where they were killed armed. I did not get the response I expected…

- Gilbert Collard, how have you been treated since your entry into the National Assembly? Were you welcomed? Ostracized? What happened?

- I must say I have been very welcome. I was welcomed by those on the left whom I know, who shook my hand, by some on the right whom I know and others I don't know. Many people told me they were shocked by the boorishness of Mr. Copé who refused to greet Marion when she was on the podium as secretary, 22 years old… But aside from the boorish Mr. Copé, most parliamentarians possess a republican courtesy that I applaud.

- And you still have no intention of getting your membership card from the Front National, despite the urgings of its president Marine Le Pen?

- No. I'm a man who does not like labels.