AAfter sadness, disappointment and anger, it is fear and confusion that have now been told. We all know the results of the first round of the French presidential election – it’s a choice between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. Though this choice is really hard to swallow, I have spent the past several days thinking about what to do next. I wonder if my vote could really tip the scales? Worse still, I find myself thinking about whether my role as a voter still has any real value in France. Should I vote for Macron to block the far right, or abstain, and potentially hand over my ballot paper to fascism?
We didn’t want to be faced with this dilemma again, five years after the last time. But I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no way, either through abstention or a blank vote, that I can allow the far right to gain power.
There’s the fear of becoming a second-class citizen; the fear that foreign residents, asylum seekers and Muslims, however apparent their faith or not, will effectively be outlawed. The fear we may lose basic liberties, to think and express ourselves freely, to worship and believe as we wish, to assemble and demonstrate. So to prevent Le Pen from ruling my country I shall have to go out and vote for a man who trampled on our rights during his first term.
This election boils down to choosing the lesser of two evils, and damage limitation. I’m afraid the outcome of my vote will be devastating, but I’m also terrified by the idea of Le Pen’s Rassemblement National being in charge of our already battered secular rights. It would lead to more discrimination, adding to the rising Islamophobia of the past five years. I will never forget that Macron’s interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, once criticized Le Pen for being “too soft”.
I’m 20, so this electoral outing is my first brush with “civic duty”. It never occurred to me this poll would be such an ordeal, in psychological terms. The sense of duty has given way to an awareness of how urgent it is to halt the rise of the far right, a process that has been fueled by the person currently in power.
Blocking the far right is mainly justified by the desire to protect my folk, people like me, from a potentially deadly fate. The “national priority” advocated by Le Pen, restricting basic rights such as housing, welfare and jobs for people who aren’t French nationals, is enough for me to want to prevent her having a free hand.
The next five years will certainly be painful, because I’m a young woman, of north African descent, a Muslim, living in a poor neighborhood and from a family with limited means. Should Macron win, his next term of office is likely to bring tough measures such as, for example, only people in work – no longer the unemployed – qualifying for income support, and retirement age being pushed up to 65 – despite the fact that life expectancy is only 62 for a quarter of the very poorest people in France.
We shall go on protesting, organizing and getting together everyone within reach to make ourselves heard. The main thing is not to give up. Ultimately, my vote will enable me to suffer less.
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism