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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Bonjour - is that France Telecom?

One of the periodic frustrations of living in the Provençal countryside is that phone services and electricity are prone to give up the ghost fairly frequently. Since 2004, when I began to live here full time, the phoneline has always stopped working for a day or two after heavy rain. “Won’t be able to call or email you tomorrow” I’ll tell a friend, ”there’s a lot of rain forecast.”

Often the line goes dead for no apparent reason. Once your Livebox stops showing the steady little green light and starts flashing a little red one, you know you’re in for several weeks of trouble. Since your fixe (landline phone) and internet both depend on the Livebox, you can find yourself stuck up a track in a forest without internet or telephone for weeks on end. Since I’m the only person on the planet not to use a mobile phone, bang goes my entire communication system.

In 2009 when my line stopped working, it took 6 weeks and 7 visits by 14 young France Telecom subcontractors to restore the service. They persistently turned up without ladders, so they couldn’t work on the line attached to the top of a post. Cynical I may be, but I guess that France Telecom pay these subcontractors every time they turn out to a client’s home. Therefore they have every incentive to turn up, find an excuse not to fix the line and come back a few days later. Rinse and repeat.

The last time they fixed the line, instead of connecting the cable in the air between two posts, they left it draped across hundreds of yards of my neighbour’s land, on the ground, among wild herbs, flowers and shrubs. “It’s a temporary repair” the young technician said. “So I see. D’you think the permanent repair can be made soon?” I asked. He shrugged. “Insh’allah” he replied. So, here we are in France in the 21st century and I have to rely on allah for my phone service.

Repeated pleas to a France Telecom manager to connect the cable properly had zero result. At one point, he told my neighbour that I had to make a complaint (it was my phone service) and told me that she had to make a complaint (it was her land). The fact that we’d both made the complaint, several times, achieved nothing.

Over the months, the cable moved around in shrubs swayed by the mistral. Passing wild pigs no doubt picked their way across it and the local shepherd got annoyed because he couldn’t let his sheep graze around it in case they inadvertently tugged it loose and disconnected me. I don’t suppose I’m the only customer in Provence to worry, when I spot a wild boar, that my phone line may go down or to feel guilty that the local sheep can’t graze because I need to use the internet.

Eventually the inevitable happened and the cable trailing on the ground got tugged by wind or beast and disconnected from the telephone pole. When the service went off I wondered out to inspect the cable and found the end of it lying wrapped round a small pine tree.

France Telecom promised to send a team to repair it yesterday but they didn’t turn up and reported that they couldn’t find the house. Silly, really, as they’ve visited many times. Still, they’ll be paid to try and find it again in a few days… Meanwhile, the girl at the FT depannage service told me darkly that the line has been tested and the problem is beaucoup plus compliqué than I think. Not being a telecoms engineer, I can’t really comment but it certainly looks quite simple to me. The cable is disconnected from the pole.

I have a friend who lives nearby whose service was off for nearly three months this year. It worked intermittently at first – two minutes on, five minutes off, ten minutes on, three minutes off…. Each time it came on, she’d scramble to call FT customer service to report the fault. Naturally, the reply each time was that the line seemed to be working perfectly well at that moment so there was nothing they could do. By the time the problem was resolved she’d spent over 1000 euros on a clé 3G, on internet cafés, and calls to FT and Orange. She absolutely had to have internet access for her work. France Telecom offered her a refund of her subscription amounting to 180 euros and she’s currently discussing the issue with the ombudsman.

It’s not just France Telecom that has trouble providing a service in rural areas either. Electricity supply can be a patchy affair. The electricity tends to go off during a storm whether there’s rain or not. Sometimes it comes back on quietly, of its own accord. Once, the pole got struck by lightning and a squad of handsome men turned up like circus acrobats, with impressive gear – harnesses, ropes, power tools - and reconnected the supply within days. EDF just contacted me this week though, with a new problem. My electricity counter apparently hasn’t counted my electricity consumption since 2010. They’d continued to send me estimated bills all through 2011 and I’d continued to pay them. But when they sent a bloke to read the real figure in December 2011, it was the same number that showed in November 2010. The dial simply stopped turning a year ago. I was asked to call this number and that to have an engineer turn out and fix it. After a morning of getting nowhere, a young girl at EDF told me she couldn’t send a guy out because there was a general systems failure in the EDF offices. OK. So I wrote them a letter saying that when the current goes off it’s my problem but now the counter’s stopped turning it’s their problem. They can send an engineer whenever they like since the counter is outside the house. Voilà – and we’ll see how quickly they turn up to fix it.

Friends tell me that I’m quite wrong to think there’s anything particular about power and phone supplies in the countryside in Provence. One friend told me her boyfriend had a problem with his phone line and internet service last year and it was three full months before FT got it fixed. ”And think of where he lives” she said. Bang slap in the middle of Marseille. The second biggest city in France.