http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070415/lf_nm/france_election_besancenot_dc
France's "Red Postman" is darling of far left
By James Mackenzie Sun Apr 15, 6:29 PM ET
France has a soft spot for its left-wing rebels and this year's presidential election has produced a new favorite in Olivier Besancenot, a 32-year-old Trotskyist dubbed "The Red Postman."
Besancenot, candidate of the Communist Revolutionary League, has emerged as front-runner from a gaggle of far-left and anti-globalization figures challenging both right-wing former Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Segolene Royal.
Voters are warier this time round of voting for the far left since the 2002 election when several far-left candidates siphoned off support from Socialist Lionel Jospin leading to his defeat by Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right National Front.
But although Besancenot, who was endorsed recently by British film maker Ken Loach, says his main enemies are Le Pen and Sarkozy, his camp dismisses any notion of him standing aside to help Royal.
"All I can say is we don't share the ideas of that section of the left," said 23-year-old Fatima Mekki, a Besancenot supporter at a rally in the northern town of Rouen last week.
Besancenot, who dresses casually and looks more like a graduate student than a president, has established himself as a sharp and sometimes witty critic of the capitalist system, contrasting fat management salaries and low pay for workers.
"They treat us like a Kleenex to be thrown away or a lemon to be squeezed dry," he told around 1,000 supporters in Rouen.
Dressed in his trademark T-shirt and pullover, he quotes leftwing icons like Louise Michel, heroine of the 1871 Paris Commune and urges his listeners to "vote with your guts."
He wants to raise the net minimum wage by 50 percent to 1,500 euros ($2,032) a month, stop firms sacking workers, more public housing, free public transport and a 32-hour work week.
His supporters dismiss suggestions that the program could not possibly be financed, saying the wealth of the country is all concentrated in the wrong places.
"At the level of the big bosses, there's plenty of money to get hold of from shareholders," said student Paul Fessard.
REVOLUTION
With the shock of 2002 still raw for many left-wing voters, Besancenot is polling only 3.5-4 percent in the opinion polls a week before the first round of the election next Sunday, and has no hope of reaching the deciding runoff on May 6.
The rest of the chronically divided far left is doing even worse, unlike five years ago when the two main Trotskyist candidates, Besancenot and Arlette Laguiller of the Workers' Struggle party, took around 10 percent of the vote.
But in a country deeply suspicious of the market-friendly orthodoxy of "ultra liberal" Britain and the United States, the influence of candidates like Besancenot or anti-globalization activist Jose Bove is bigger than their share of the vote.
The most vivid illustration was the rejection in 2005 of the European constitution, a victory for an unlikely coalition of left and right-wing groups united by nothing more than their hostility to a project supported by the mainstream parties.
Job cuts, anger over low pay and high prices and unease at tensions in France's poor suburbs give him ample ammunition.
And Besancenot, who really is a postman albeit one with a history degree, also taps into a sense of frustration many feel with a political class they believe has lost touch.
Helped by an electoral law that ensures all candidates equal airtime and by his own ease with the media, he has become a familiar figure, replacing the veteran Laguiller as the leftist many quite like even if they won't elect.