PARIS — With its culture of impassioned harangues in parliament, verbal knife-throwing and heartfelt monologues, French politics often verges on vaudeville theater.
This week, it slipped clear into the genre of farce — and just about everybody who is anybody in politics and media got invited on stage.
In what turned out to be a weeklong spectacle, National Front leader Marine Le Pen and David Pujadas, France’s most famous political interviewer, were cast in the main roles as cabaret diva and shifty impresario, respectively. Jealous husbands were played by ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist party chief Jean-Christophe Cambadélis. Potential suitors with minor speaking parts were taken by Xavier Bertrand and Pierre de Saintignon, both of them Le Pen’s rivals in a regional election race.
The trouble started when Pujadas invited Le Pen to appear on his 95-minute talk show, “Des paroles des actes” (“Words and Acts”, or DPDA) on France 2 Thursday evening, for the fifth time.
The invitation, which made Le Pen by far the most frequent guest on DPDA since the show’s launch in 2011, was not to the liking of Bertrand, who is trailing Le Pen in opinion polls ahead of the December election in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region.
Bertrand complained in a letter to Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin that Le Pen was getting far too much exposure on TV compared to other election candidates, who, according to campaign laws, should all be getting equal airtime. The TV authority’s response was laconic, ordering the cancelation of Le Pen’s scheduled appearance on another show, due to be aired Sunday.
But that was just the start.
On Wednesday, the eve of DPDA’s broadcast, Socialist party chief Cambadélis decided to get involved, reaching out in a rare gesture to Sarkozy, his counterpart at the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party. Over the phone, the two men agreed that something had to be done about Le Pen’s perceived media dominance.
A top LR official wrote to the head of France Télévisions, which owns France 2, to complain a bit more forcefully about the lack of equity, and the fact that neither of Le Pen’s electoral opponents had been invited on the show.
Le Pen, who has so far avoided participating in any televised debate against her rivals in the regional election, instead sticking to national events, was due to face off on DPDA against Stéphane Le Foll, spokesman for President François Hollande’s Socialist government, and Jean-Christophe Lagarde, president of the centrist UDI party.
Early on Thursday, Pujadas’ team offered a compromise: Bertrand and Saintignon would also be invited to join the show. Le Pen would get to debate each of the other guests during a 45-minute regional segment tacked on to the regular show.
The far-right leader’s response?
“France 2 wants to impose six debates in a row on me including a 40-minute regional segment. Do they think I’m their dog?” she tweeted.
In response, Pujadas granted an interview to France Télévisions’ own web site in which he said that the conditions for inviting Le Pen on his show were “non-negotiable.”
The stage was set for a final showdown. It came late Thursday, when Le Pen published a communiqué titled “Mister Pujadas, nobody imposes anything on me.”
“I will not participate tonight in the masquerade that Mr. Pujadas’ show ‘Des paroles et des actes’ has become over the past few hours,” her statement read. “With incredible arrogance, Pujadas thought that he could for the second time force me to accept the circumstances … Nobody imposes anything on me.”
End-result: DPDA was canceled. Neither Le Pen, Bertrand nor Saintignon got any airtime. Sarkozy and Cambadélis more or less got what they wanted.
Everyone else enjoyed the show.