Christian Estrosi, Eric Ciotti, and the elected representatives of the Alpes-Maritimes have created and signed a “Manifesto” that takes a stand against the right to vote for foreigners advocated by François Hollande.
For a few days now, all across France, the UMP has been working to court the National Front electorate. Here, in the Alpes-Maritimes where the far-right party has set records, sometimes even surpassing the UMP in its traditional strongholds, the two local leaders Christian Estrosi and Eric Ciotti have charted a course further to the right since the evening of the first round of the presidential election.
Foreigners’ voting rights, undocumented immigrants, burqa, immigration are key words borrowed from the Le Pen supporters and scattered here and there solely to instill fear and target this electorate. It is indeed this proposal by Hollande to grant foreigners the right to vote in local elections that became the focal point and new spearhead of this strategy.
Yesterday, during a press conference at the UMP 06 headquarters, Estrosi and Ciotti presented a manifesto for voting rights tied to citizenship, in other words, against the right to vote for foreigners.
Voting rights that, interestingly, posed no issue for Nicolas Sarkozy in 2005. In an interview with the newspaper “Le Monde,” he then expressed that “it would not be abnormal for a foreigner in a regular situation who works, pays taxes, and has resided for at least ten years in France, to be able to vote in municipal elections.” But seven years later, the president-candidate revised his position due to a different context in 2012.
