Sarkozy, Hollande and Le Pen in Provence

The French presidential election is off to a fine start in Provence, with the usual mudslinging and waffle that accompany political campaigns. Candidates Sarkozy, Marine le Pen and Hollande have all been duffing each other up in Marseille, whipping their respective audiences into a frenzy of enthusiasm, adulation and flag waving. Hollande had his crowd singing La Marseillaise after telling them he loved Marseille because it was the town that gave France its national anthem.

Sarkozy, for the UMP, made a rather strange appeal to his supporters at the Parc Chanot in France's violent second city. With people being slaughtered on the streets and housing estates in the casually murderous Marseille drug wars - kalashnikovs and drive-by killings y compris - you might think he'd offer something in the way of help to citizens trying to go about their business in a hail of bullets.Yet he asked the people of Marseille and France to help him. "Aidez-moi!" he cried. To which a voter might reply: "You're missing the point."

Front National leader and presidential candidate Marine le Pen pitched up at the same hall soon after Sarkozy, confident in the support she has in the south of France. Aiming a direct punch at the president, she risked offending the people of Marseille by telling them bluntly that the city is a symbol of Sarkozy's failure in government. He had failed, she said, to curb immigration and crack down on violence.

Then Parti Socialiste candidate Hollande toddled down from Paris with a checklist of good works he will perform if elected. More housing. Check. More jobs. Check. Better healthcare. Check. The socialist president of the PACA region, Michel Vauzelle, had issued an Appel du Sud - Appeal from the South - before Hollande's visit. His list of demands was far more precise - high-speed rail link between Nice and Paris, a voie rapide between Gap and Grenoble and freight rail links between Marseille and Turin to run through the Durance valley up to a tunnel to be cut through Montgenèvre. This last development, says the Appel, would ‘open up’ the Hautes-Alpes and Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Hollande replied cautiously that if elected he'll organise a 'contract' with southern France.

The other candidates have a lower profile than Sarko, Le Pen and Hollande. Mélenchon, for the Front de gauche and Francois Bayrou for the centrist MoDems get a mention in conversation locally but polls show that the UMP, PS and FN candidates are the three front runners in Provence as in France more widely.

Le Pen has only just scraped together her 500 mayoral signatures to become an official candidate. She complained that some French mayors were pressured not to support her. This is by the by, but I had a run-in with her bodyguards a couple of weeks ago at the Salon d'Agriculture in Paris where she was arguing against halal slaughter of livestock. (See photo featuring Le Pen and skinhead.) Someone threw a glass at her and her squad of skinhead heavies took off in pursuit. There was a ridiculous chase round the hall, where thousands of people were milling about eating spicy sausages from La Réunion and gently admiring exotic flowers from French Guyana. The press and TV were filming Le Pen of course. I followed the heavies and found them circling a tall black guy, snarling at him and pointing fingers in his face. So I took a picture and was immediately pounced on. They surrounded me, grabbed my arm and tried to swipe my camera. One of them said "We're police" so I said "Show me your badges". They growled a bit and twisted my arm a bit more. "Erase the photo or we'll take the camera" they said. Hmmm. I had a lot of photos on there that I wanted to keep and I wasn't at the Salon to film Le Pen's cranes rasés. I erased the photo while an elderly  woman protested (the only one among all the onlookers). "Why should she have to erase a photo in a public place?" she asked. However, I escaped with my camera intact and a sore shoulder.

Talking to people around here about the election there seems to be no great enthusiasm for Sarkzoy although the polls currently tip him to beat Hollande in the first round. Hollande seems the more unsure of the two - he appealed to voters not to abstain, telling them that the extreme right could benefit from abstentions as it did in 2002, when Chirac unexpectedly faced Jean-Marie le Pen in the second round.

There is plenty of cycnicism about candidates and political parties and it's visible on campaign posters around Provence. Here's some expressive handiwork on a poster at the  farmers' market in Velleron. Mélenchon needn't feel bad though. All the candidates are getting the same treament.

And even DSK is on election posters for the right wing. "DSK" the poster proclaims: "the values of the left wing." Ouch! Unfair, surely?, given that DSK's destiny has taken him from the brothel to the courtroom and far from the campaign tail.

It'll be interesting to see how the first round of the election plays out. A feeling at the start of the campaign that François Hollande had it in the bag has, for the moment, dissipated. The outcome seems less predictable since voters are unsure which, if any, candidate has answers to the pressing problems they face. Précarité, or insecurity, is a big issue. The French are worried about jobs, the purchasing power of the euro, the high price of homes, high rent, crime, and many worry about immigration and lack of integration. Sarkozy is saying he'll reduce immigration in a clear bid to pull the rug out from beneath Le Pen. In Provence there is both significant distaste for the Front National and significant support. Traditionally, the FN opposed immigration from north Africa and presented immigrants from the Maghreb as problematic. Immigration is wider now of course and so other races and nationalities are in the frame. The Appel du Sud, with its left-wing supporters, complains that people from northern Europe are taking over Provence and PACA. They are accused of creating 'ghettos of the rich' and a region of second-homes. They are no doubt joined in that view by supporters of Le Pen. I was talking to a young stonemason the other day who was complaining that he cannot afford even the smallest apartment in Provence. "I understand the support for the FN" he told me. "There are too many immigrants in this region. But it's not the Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians causing the problem in my view. It's the Swiss, Dutch, Belgians,Americans and British." "Sorry" he said, looking sheepish. "But everyone in the north wants to live in Provence for the sun and the way of life. We haven't got room. We can't take everybody."

Seems the left and the right are agreed on one thing in this election then.

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Organised crime in Provence

Wouldn't you think that if you were a gangster involved in organized crime on the Cote d'Azur and made your living riding around on Yamahas shooting other gangsters, it would occur to you that one day someone would ride up on a motorbike and shoot you?

Apparently it didn't occur to mobsters Stéphane Tixier and Amadéo Titeux because they were completely taken by surprise when a gunman roared into the MIN fruit and veg wholesale market in Nice yesterday morning and shot the pair of them. (Admittedly it was only 7.20am so they may not have been entirely with it.) Killed in a hail of bullets amongst the oranges and aubergines, the two men may just have had time to say to each other: "How come we didn't this coming?"

The MIN (marché d’intérêt national) is a busy market selling fruit, vegetables and other agricutural products. Tixier and Titeux were at two stands belonging to Cash Fruits - presumably more interested in the cash than the fruit - when two motorbikes arrived and the driver of one opened fire. The assassin escaped with his accomplice and the two killers then burnt one of the bikes, a Yamaha, and escaped together on the other. Police quickly found the burnt out bike at Saint-Laurent-du-Var.

Tixier (49) and Titeux (41) were both heavily involved in organised crime (grand banditisme) on the Riviera and had served prison sentences for taking part in at least one murder.

They were jailed for 12 years each for their part in the killing of Philippe Di Cristo, 30, another big bandit, who was shot dead in front of a video-club at Cagnes-sur-Mer in January 2002. Tixier and Titeux were, no less, the drivers of the two motorbikes used in the murder. It seems the hit was organised by a third man, Jacques Sordi, a key figure in organised crime on the Riviera and known as ‘le Général’. Sordi was jailed for 15 years.

Not long after they were freed (for good behaviour?) Tixier and Titeux were hauled in by police on the Cote d’Azur and questioned about the murder of Thierry Derlan, 39, who was killed in 2010. Derlan was a rising goodfella on the Riviera and considered an expert at evading police and rival crime gangs. His expertise let him down on a lovely May day when he was hit by seven bullets outside his own home in Nice.

There is a strangely satisfying symmetry about murderous gangsters knocking each other off, especially when they're killed in exactly the way they've killed others. The fact that such killings are seen as more or less hermetically sealed wihin their own criminal network was somewhat underlined by the police response to Tixier and Titeux's deaths. They put a tactful 'cordon of security' round the market but told traders to carry on selling their fruit and veg. Notwithstanding two drive-by shootings, trading at the MIN, the local paper reported, was not interrupted.

Organized crime on the Cote d'Azur is making plenty of local headlines recently. A major trial in Marseille started this week which aims to hammer Corsican gangsters who have set up protection and extortion rackets across Provence and in Paris. Jacques Mariani, the main defendant, is a surviving member of a Corsican gang elegantly named Brise de Mer (Sea Breeze.) Mariani is accused of having established a widespread extortion racket in and around Aix-en-Provence. While he was quietly having his breakfast in jail yesterday morning before appearing in the dock, police in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence were breaking down doors and dragging men into police wagons. They arrested 30 sleepy suspects from a rival Corsican gang, Bergers de Venzolasca (Venzolasca shepherds).

Leaving aside the fact that the gang names sound, respectively, like a racehorse and some sort of sports team, you have to ask yourself if being involved in organised crime is really worth it. You get to extort money out of small businessmen who run bars and nightclubs, and maybe you get rich. But one downside is that you never know when the battering ram will hit the door and the cops will haul you off to court. Another is that you're in constant rivalry with people prepared to kill you. Sea Breeze and the Shepherds are just the current crime topdogs, ready to be pushed off their perch. Before them, the Barresi and Campanella crime families controlled extortion and other criminal activities on the Riviera. And right now there'll be some other gang ready to take over from Mariani and his mob.

The guys who end up in jail in Marseille may have the best luck of course. The alternative is likely to be that one morning you're standing chatting to a fellow gangster in the market and a guy rides up on a motorbike and shoots you in the head. It may be justice of a sort, but it's not poetic.

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Crime and Justice in Provence

Well, it's everywhere. Crime, I mean.(You didn't think my rose-coloured glasses were that heavily tinted, did you?)Every time I open the local paper or turn on the news there's another armed robbery reported or another shooting in Marseille. Yesterday a 17-year-old boy was shot dead in Marseille outside an apartment block, La Castellane. The sapeurs-pompiers (fire brigade/paramedics) arrived promptly but couldn't save the boy from the seven rounds fired into his body from a kalashnikov rifle.

Marseille's long had a reputation for violent crime and the latest version of urban warfare in France's second city combines cocaine dealing with kalashnikovs.

A few weeks ago another youngster, Ali Attia, was shot dead in his cousin's restaurant in a café in Saint-Antoine, a quartier in the north of Marseille. His killer strolled in with a kalashnikov and shot him as he sat at the dinner table.

These tit-for-tat killings are referred to in the Provençal press as a war of the clans - gangs and families vying to control cocaine supply in Marseille. But there are also casual killings when young men loaded up with cocaine take offence at a passing glance from another kid in the quartier. Guns are used as casually as fists once were. The ex-wife of a friend of mine was shot in the head some time ago as she walked down a road in Marseille in daylight. Obviously not knowing what had hit her, she was rushed to hospital and luckily survived. What had hit her was of course a stray bullet from a gun being used by a local guy to settle some imbecilic score - drug payment or other.

Since la crise started to bite in Provence as elsewhere in Europe, there seems to have been exponential growth in the business of armed robbery too. In and around Avignon for example, a series of recent armed robberies have targetted businesses like McDonalds and Quick (a drive-through takeaway). Supermarkets like Intermarché have been frequently hit too. The police in Avignon caught six teenage boys within minutes of the Quick robbery. Turning up to the scene of the crime with admirable rapidity, the unit made a tour of the vicinty and found six armed lads in a car counting cash.... Back to crime school, boys - you haven't learnt the basics.

Another criminal gang that needs to go back to crime school tried to blow up a bank in Gardanne in the Bouches-du-Rhone this week. They used explosive to blast the safe that feeds the cash distributer. But they didn't use enough and the safe stayed intact. They did however blow out the windows of an elderly resident's house. And they also apparently managed to get themselves filmed by the CCTV camera, also unaffected by the blast.

Crime isn't always violent, of course. Marseille has just seen the trial of a counterfeiter money-maker, Michel Vialle, who bagged himself a profit of around 150,000 by stealing the special paper used to make money, then forging a bunch of euros and Algerian dinar. (Actually the paper theft was violent. A vehicle carrying the paper was blasted open to carry out the theft.) Vialle - nicknamed le canard - the Duck - I have no idea why - told the police he was pretty astonished at the success of his forged euros. He hadn't expected them to be accepted all over the place, but they were. He was caught after a bloke saw him burning a few counterfeit bills, outside, and later handed burnt fragments to the police. The police went to the site and found a toothpick Vialle had discarded by the notes. It had his DNA on it. It must be the first time in history, surely, that a counterfeiter has been trapped by a toothpick.

Last week I went to see the French film Les Lyonnais, starring the increasingly watchable Gérard Lanvin. Directed by Olivier Marchal, it's a hard-hitting film about gypsy crime families in the 50s and ensuing decades. Based on the real history of Edmond Vidal, nicknamed Momon, it shows the excessive violence of that milieu and that era. It borrows a bit too much use of imagery and episodes from The Godfather, but nevertheless it's a very good film.

Provence also has a very large community of gitanes, officially recast as gens de voyage these days. I don't give two hoots for the politically correct terminology - one of my neighbours out here in the forest is a gitane and the first thing she ever said to me after announcing her name was "Je suis une gitane". The gypsies of Provence hail mostly from Spain originally and still have a strong presence in the Camargue, the marshy wetlands south and west of Arles. But sites, official and otherwise, are dotted all over Provence. I have been told that the prisons here are largely controlled by the gitanes - internally, I mean. I've also been told that some years ago there was a battle in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue between local gitanes and the maghrebin community. Apparently, the gypsies took offence at something done by young maghrebin guys and turned up at their estate in the evening and started shooting out windows in the tall apartment blocks. I was told that the police were informed but declined to get involved, feeling perhaps that this was just another, if smaller, war of the clans. Maybe it's an apocryphal story. But maybe not.

What is noticeable in Provence is that very often the wheels of justice turn quickly. If a criminal is nabbed quickly, and the evidence is clear and simple, the offender can find himself in court and in jail within days. I recall a case where a young driver was stopped by police for traffic offences and swore at them. He was in court the next morning, convicted and jailed. The police respond quickly to crime - not always but often - and the courts tend to hand out punishments fairly freely for anti-social behaviour.

There's also petty crime all over the place and even that tends to be reported by people and documented by the police even if little can be done to catch offenders. My neighbour came out of his house one morning not long ago to find his car propped on a breeze block. A wheel had been stolen. A few years before, his previous car had been stolen. This is up a track outside a small village. Other neighbours have had petrol stolen out of their cars and tractors. One had a large agricultural trailer nicked. My nearest neighbour called the cops one night when burglars were breaking into her house. The intruders buzzed off. Other near neighbours had a young guy walk into their home and steal cash, a satnav thing and a digital camera. He had the nerve to return a few nights later but this time was scared off.

Last year, a disgruntled neighbour asked me if I'd seen anyone hanging around his land just before Christmas. No, I said. Why? "I came out to pick my olives" he said "and they'd all been stolen. It's completely uncivil." He's right of course. But at least the thieves didn't turn up with kalashnikovs.