Here something I have always been willing to post, but I was afraid it wouldn't interest anybody. However, since some forum members appear to be interested in French politics, here it is. Be warned: I am very clear about the POD, and not at all about what would happen next, so your suggestions are welcome.
In the French presidential election of 2002, Lionel Jospin, the Prime Minister and Socialist Party candidate, was eliminated on the first ballot by Far-Right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. On May 5, 2002, President Jacques Chirac was re-elected with 82.21% of the vote, against 17.79% for Le Pen. Almost all the electors who voted for left-wing candidates on the first ballot felt that they had no choice but to vote for Chirac in order to defeat Le Pen. Therefore, with the lower score ever achieved by a sitting President on a first ballot (less than 20%), Chirac ended up with a landslide victory.
Jospin’s defeat precipitated his retirement from French politics and was a huge trauma for the Socialists. The consequenses of April 21, 2002 on French politics were massive and profound.
The funny thing is, had Jospin been able to go to the second ballot, he would have had an excellent chance to beat Chirac.
Jospin’s undoing on April 21 was the number of left-wing candidates, other than himself: 6 in total, who obviously got votes that would otherwise have gone to Jospin. But the final nail in the coffin was the candidacy of Jean-Pierre Chevènement. Chevènement, a former member of the Socialist Party, several times minister when Mitterrand was President, and until 2000, Minister of the Interior in Jospin’s own government, decided to run in late 2001. Chevènement had a broad appeal to both left- and right-wing sympathisers and gained some credibility as an alternative to both Chirac and Jospin. At some point early in 2002,he was credited with up to 16% in the polls. Actually he only got 5.33% on April 21 (1,518,568 votes) – but it was enough to prevent Jospin from reaching the second ballot. Le Pen, with less than 200,000 votes more than the Prime Minister, was in. Jospin was out.
Now, there is another interesting fact about Jean-Pierre Chevènement: in September 1998 (at the time he was still Minister of the Interior in Jospin's cabinet), he underwent surgery to his gall bladder and had an allergic reaction to the anesthetic. He went into a coma and for 8 days nobody knew if he would survive. He did, eventually. Or did he really ?...
POD:
September 4, 1998: Jean-Pierre Chevènement, Minister of the Interior, dies at the Val-de-Grâce Army Hospital in Paris.
April 21, 2002: 1st ballot of the Presidential Election
Jacques Chirac: 5 666 021
Lionel Jospin: 5 410 267
Jean-Marie Le Pen: 4 944 993
May 5, 2002: 2nd ballot
Lionel Jospin: 17 119 642 (52,64%)
Jacques Chirac: 15 402 456 (47,36%)
May 10, 2002: Lionel Jospin is inaugurated as the 23rd President of the French Republic.
And that's where I'm stuck...
Obviously Jospin needs to appoint a Prime minister; Strauss-Kahn appears to be one of the main contenders, but is he really a team leader and wouldn't he be better suited as Finance Minister? François Hollande's tenure as First Secretary of the Socialist Party between 1997 and 2002 has been adequate but some say he's a middle-of-the-road kind of leader, still under the shadow of Jospin. Hollande would definitely get an important ministry, I'm not sure about Matignon. So who else? Elisabeth Guigou? Jean Glavany? Hard to say.
The problem is that Jospin had been Prime minister for 5 years, the second longuest serving PM in French history. He promoted many new faces in his government, especially women. What would he have done if elected President: change or continuity?