Ça commence

The French presidential election only officially started when the incumbent President (you know who I am talking about) formally announced, to no ones great surprise I might add, on the 16th of February that he would be seeking re-election, which was also the same date he established his own Twitter account. There is only a little over a month till the first round of voting, scheduled for 22nd April. Although there are officially ten candidates, after a further month of campaigning it seems to have settled as expected into a choice between Sarkozy and the Socialist Party candidate, François Hollande, with the latter the clear front runner at the moment.
Sarkozy has switched into his terribly humble French-everyman campaigning mode, the hypocrisy of which would make Uriah Heep blush, but which he yet manages to pull off with aplomb. A few days ago I heard him on the radio arguing that being President was so incredibly difficult you shouldn't entrust the responsibility to someone with no experience in the post - to which M. Hollande made the quite reasonable reply that if that was a serious argument why bother to have an election at all.
The main impact on my daily routine is that from now until the thing is over I am not able to get on the train or go to the markets without being accosted by someone trying to foist flyers from one or more of the candidates on me. And an agreeable requirement of the French process is that independent advertising by individual candidates is banned. Thanks to their strong practical belief in egalité every candidate is allotted the same quota of advertising time on state television and it is very closely regulated - they can't purchase access to additional TV and radio advertising - which means that, amazingly enough, issues have to be thrashed out and discussed in the media (again with strict compliance with equal time provisions) or even in local meetings, rather than subjecting us to cash-fuelled propaganda bombardment via the airwaves as is the norm now in the various anglophone political systems.