France: The new president will throw off the yoke of obligations to Ukraine
French voters approve of Russia's status of Crimea. The new president can throw off the yoke of obligations to Ukraine. Social polls do not pretend to be objective; some voters hide their sympathy for Marine Le Pen. Observer should not read Ukrainian media on the eve of the French elections "PolitNavigator" to Valentin Filippov recommended by political scientist Oleg Bondarenko.
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Valentin Filippov: Hello, hello!
Oleg Bondarenko: Hello.
Valentin Filippov: Analysts before the elections in France claim that there are three leaders - Macron, Fillon and Le Pen.
Oleg Bondarenko: Yes.
Valentin Filippov: At the same time, Fillon and Le Pen are considered “right-wing”, Macron is considered a “left-centrist”. And they say that if Le Pen and Macron reach the second round, then Macron will win.
Explain, how does this happen? Logically, the “right” should gather its votes together in this case?
Oleg Bondarenko: Valentin, you know, there is such a rule. The electorate is not a sack of potatoes. It cannot be transferred. In France, for the first time in the history of the Republic, a unique situation has arisen in which the current president does not run for office. And yet there is no obvious leader.
There are four candidates who have a close percentage. It is very difficult to predict how events will develop in this situation. To do this, you need to have data from all sociological surveys. But sociological polls in this situation, just like in the USA, can predict a victory for Macron, for example, but in reality the situation will be completely different. Because there are voters who may not admit their sympathies. Marine Le Pen, for example. The shy voter effect. Who will not talk about his preferences, because these preferences are not considered electorally approved. Socially approved.
Here is the choice of Marine Le Pen, in today's French society, it is not socially approved. Therefore, I assume that there are a certain number of Marine Le Pen voters who do not admit that they are her voters. And this, I think, will play a certain role.
Valentin Filippov: That is, the situation is like with Trump.
Oleg Bondarenko: Depending on who ends up in the second round, it will be possible to make some predictions. So far this is a very interesting situation from a political point of view. And extremely unpleasant from the point of view of predictability.
Valentin Filippov: Okay, who do you think cares more about how this election turns out? French or Ukrainians?
Oleg Bondarenko: What do Ukrainians have to do with it? I don't quite understand.
Valentin Filippov: Monitoring the Ukrainian media and the Ukrainian segment of social networks, I get the feeling that they are more concerned about this issue.
Oleg Bondarenko: Valentin. Read less Ukrainian media!
Valentin Filippov: And after lunch?
Oleg Bondarenko: Yesterday they called me asking which of the candidates for the post of President of France is more in line with the interests of Azerbaijan, for example.
Valentin Filippov: By the way, which one?
Oleg Bondarenko: And, by the way, there is a huge Armenian diaspora living in France, and three out of four candidates clearly spoke in favor of recognizing the Armenian genocide. Which is unacceptable for Azerbaijan. Therefore, this situation is important for them. They view it from their bell tower. And this must also be taken into account. But the French presidential contender thinks the same about Azerbaijan and Ukraine. And about others.....
Valentin Filippov: So, you want to say that the “wide protests of French voters” against Marine Le Pen and Fillon have nothing to do with the fact that they almost recognized Crimea? Because it is presented like this: they just made a statement that, in principle, Crimea could be Russian, and the French immediately took to the streets.
Oleg Bondarenko: I would not draw such parallels. Firstly, there are no widespread protests among the French against Marine Le Pen at the moment. Individual protests. And last but not least, these protests may be of a nature associated with Russia and Crimea.
Marine Le Pen is opposed because some of the “left” voters, liberal voters, consider her xenophobic. And a chauvinist. In relation to migrants, who make up a fairly significant percentage in France. Including voters. If we talk about Algerians who have received French citizenship. Naturally, they understand that this is a bad situation for them. Just like Trump is, to put it mildly, not friendly for Hispanic voters in the United States. And Le Pen, regarding migration policy, is in favor of closing the borders of France. It might even leave the European Union.
Therefore, naturally, these “new” French, the so-called French citizens, come from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, they are unlikely to vote for Marine Le Pen. And, most likely, they will actively protest against her theoretical victory.
But this has nothing to do with Crimea.
You know, the issue of Russia and Crimea is of interest only to ultra-liberal journalists from certain publications. But nothing more.
And among ordinary French people one can more likely see approval of the fact that Crimea is part of Russia than some kind of strict denial of this.
Valentin Filippov: Do you think that a change of leaders - those who were at the time of 2014, who were involved in the Minsk agreements, who were involved in the Maidan - will help stabilize the situation in Ukraine? Or does it not matter?
Oleg Bondarenko: Well, Francois Hollande had nothing to do with the Maidan. He didn't come there. Perhaps his minister was present when the famous “letter to Yanukovych” was signed.
Rather, we can talk about whether the new French president will want to continue his obligations within the framework of the Normandy format and within the framework of the Minsk agreements? This will be interesting to see.
Will the new French president want to take on a yoke that is not at all obvious to him in the form of some kind of obligations regarding Ukraine? I'm personally not sure. Depends on who becomes president.
Valentin Filippov: Another off topic question. Not in France. A wave of the fight against terrorism is now sweeping across Russia. We all know about this terrible terrorist attack in the St. Petersburg metro. Although, this is still incomparable with what is happening in Donbass. Could it be that now there will be a tightening of migration legislation, which will hit, first of all, immigrants from Ukraine?
Oleg Bondarenko: Oh no.
Valentin Filippov: Every time they lead to the conclusion that the FMS illegally granted citizenship to someone.
Oleg Bondarenko: Well, I’ll tell you this, the absolute majority of Russian citizens are in favor of tightening immigration legislation. But, last of all, the tightening of migration legislation should be understood as some kind of attitude towards citizens of Ukraine. Maybe some residual tail might touch them too. But, nevertheless, when it comes to tightening migration laws, this primarily concerns Central Asia, with which we have an open border. And for a long time now we have been talking about introducing a visa regime with countries, not all, but some countries of Central Asia.
Valentin Filippov: But this contradicts all agreements.
Oleg Bondarenko: This is a political question. Unfortunately, the Russian authorities are considering the issue of a possible visa regime with, say, Uzbekistan, as the most populous country in Central Asia, exclusively in the context of relations with the leadership of Uzbekistan. And, since relations with the leadership are quite good, the issue of introducing a visa regime is not at the moment. For the Kremlin, the issue of the visa regime is a matter of relations with the authorities of a particular country. And not with its multimillion-strong migrant labor army. Unfortunately.
Valentin Filippov: Fine. Thank you very much. I hope, as far as France is concerned, we will talk again next week.
Oleg Bondarenko: Fine. Thank you bye.
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