what successful presidential candidate conducted a “return or back to normalcy†campaign?
Presidential campaigns offering an affluence of catch phrases, whether slogans finessed by a candidate's team to evangelize maximum impact or coined spontaneously on the trail. The proclamations of presidential hopefuls bring texture to an election race and come up to define a campaign, for a news bike or forever in the history books. FRANCE 24 breaks through the language barrier to bring you the buzzwords of the 2022 French presidential race. In the spotlight: "Happy days".
It was within the confines of the space-historic period French Communist Party headquarters in Paris's 19th arrondissement (district), in a modernist bunker-like briefing room, that Fabien Roussel unveiled his presidential entrada platform back in January. Based on what he chosen a "social, ecological and republican pact", Roussel's platform for the April vote marks the Communists' first presidential run in fifteen years, after the party saturday out the terminal two elections in favour of like-minded leftists.
"Tonight, I am issuing a call, a call to create happy days," Roussel declared at the belvedere. "Together, let's create a France of happy days." The upshot was a battle plan at once ambitious and jovial, even festive, in stark contrast to the party venue'southward cold physical feel.
The Communist candidate is hardly the first to seek out political support on the promise of better times. When Britain's Boris Johnson touted "sunlit meadows" on the horizon after Brexit, he was only referencing Winston Churchill'due south "sunlit uplands" from 1940. In Canada, when Justin Trudeau came to ability proclaiming "sunny ways", he was emulating predecessor Wilfrid Laurier from 1895. Similarly in French republic, "Happy days" (les jours heureux) is a pointed historical reference to the sunnier times that greeted the end of World War II.
Indeed, Roussel isn't the offset French political leader in recent years to make use of that specific throwback. Emmanuel Macron, addressing the nation during France's start Covid-19 lockdown in the austere spring of 2020, alleged: "My beloved compatriots, nosotros will accept better days and we will return to the happy days. I am convinced of it."
During a campaign rally using cutting-edge technology back in 2017 – at which far-leftist presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon appeared in hologram course to vii French cities at in one case – he, also, deployed a reference to those coveted "happy days".
Where does 'happy days' come from?
Information technology wouldn't be lost on Roussel, Macron or Mélenchon that the expression is a reference to the National Council of the Resistance (CNR) that coordinated France'south fight confronting the Vichy Authorities and Nazi occupation during World War II. The CNR was founded on May 27, 1943, by six political parties – including the French Communist Party – and two labour union confederations. Fifty-fifty so, as the war raged on, the group projected there was a sunnier future alee and devised its programme for those "happy days" to come after the state of war. The innovative certificate the Council would adopt the post-obit March independent major progressive advances: it sought to give women the correct to vote, to create the Social Security and a pay-equally-y'all-go pension systems, and to nationalise France'due south coal mines, the Renault car visitor, savings banks, the central bank, the railways and the national electric company.
"A programme of that sort, put into identify at the terminate of such a traumatic calamity, echoes our own challenges – when our country, brutally brought to a halt by the pandemic, is confronted with a crisis unprecedented in scale," said Roussel, seeking to resurrect his political party's golden years as it returns to the presidential ballot. Indeed, after World War II, the French Communist Party was the premier political force on the French left wing.
>> Let them eat steak: French Communists bounce dorsum with recipe for 'happy days'
Some read something deeper notwithstanding into Roussel'south "France of the happy days" campaign slogan.
He is "referring non merely to the social movements of recent years" – which have challenged the French welfare country and the big-scale social reforms born out of the French Resistance like pensions – "but also to the Front populaire", the left-fly coalition that brought French workers such cherished advances as paid holidays and a shorter workweek, noted historian Jean Vigreux, writing for The Chat in Feb.
Why has Roussel deployed the expression?
Determined to break with the anxiety-laden ambience that prevails in bourgeois and far-right discourse, Roussel is providing another vision of the world, imbued with optimism. "The tone of the campaign is betting on the 'hope' and 'joy' underpinning the French Communist Party'due south reasserted presence," wrote Vigreux. "Those 2 terms have to exercise with well-known language, potent markers meant to 're-enchant the world' and that hands counter a right-wing vision of nationalist, anti-immigrant retreat, or even of purported decline."
Roussel's presidential platform is in keeping with his slogan. One of his key pledges highlights "the correct to happiness at work, but also to happiness on holiday" and intends to allow one and all to enjoy vacations. In club to finance that projection – at a cost of €one billion on his guess – Roussel plans to launch a "Robin Hood" taxation on private jets and business-class journeys. "That mode, anybody who uses their jet or who travels in business class will tell themselves that they are besides financing access to holidays," the Communist explained.
Ane thing is clear, Roussel's campaign is a whole new vibe for the French Communist Political party, fifteen years subsequently its final presidential run. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and in the wake of lacklustre results at the presidential polls in 1995, 2002 and 2007, many saw a party on its last legs. In 2012 and 2017, it didn't put forward an in-business firm candidate, instead backing the far-left Mélenchon. Merely with his "happy days" rhetoric, 2022 candidate Roussel has, at the very to the lowest degree, found a manner to buoy the hopes of his fellow Communists once again.
This article has been adjusted from the original in French. To explore French republic 24'southward other campaign buzzwords, click here.
Source: https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220324-happy-days-french-communist-candidate-promises-a-return-to-the-good-times
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