When the mayor read the names of the
people in the last ballot paper, I sighed with relief. As the counsellors
opened the champagne, I too lifted a plastic glass, glad to celebrate the
victory of the town hall in our local elections, but in secret I was
celebrating that I, myself, hadn’t been chosen.
Chosen,
that’s how they call around here the elected members of the local council,
and calling them les élus has a kind of mystic ringing to it, as if
they were characters escaped from the Bible or from some more dramatic Star
Wars Trilogy script.
The kind of élus I am talking about weren’t going to engage in any
sort of planet-saving odyssey. They were not to become soul-cleansing gurus
or inspirers of a new religion either. They were, however, going to take on
the ungrateful task of being our local counsellors for the next seven years.
I live in a small village of around 350 people. I had been living in France
for about six years and as soon as I learnt that I had a right to vote in
the local elections, I registered my name in the town hall. Being from
another European country someone had suggested that I put my name on the
list to be elected but I rejected the idea because I didn’t feel I was ready
to face up to the responsibilities. Voting was something else; it was my
duty and my right and I was going to enjoy it.
Being so small, my village had only one list. And on the list there were the
names of eleven people I more or less knew, even if just by sight. I thought
that having just one list would make things simpler. A nearby village had
two and it was notoriously known that the neighbours were at each other
throats, husbands and wives having been reported to take the political
argument so far as to sleep in separate beds. That was something that wasn’t
going to happen in my village, I thought. One single list meant limited
choice but it would simplify things and smooth differences.
We were all very excited waiting for election day. The tables were set in
the salle des fêtes and last year’s counsellors patiently welcomed
and painstakingly wrote down the voters’ names. I went to vote in the
morning and then back again in the evening to witness the dépuillement,
the “undressing” or unravelling of the voting ballots, which started at
6pm. The salle des fêtes was filled up with chairs as if there was
going to be a play. I thought not many neighbours would bother to come to
witness the dépuillement but I was wrong: the hall was full.
I folded my coat behind the chair and got ready for a couple of hours of
boring reading. My reason for being there was solidarity with the village
and to take part in the festive celebration of the new elected town hall. My
ulterior motif, pure curiosity. It was the first time I was going to witness
a local election in the French countryside.
The chairs were hard, I was hungry and although my throat wasn’t at all as
dry as the poor mayor’s who had to read aloud so many names, I was longing
for the champagne that cooled off patiently in the fridge of the salle
des fêtes. When the church clock struck six, the mayor, surrounded by
his old counsellors, stood up. He then took a deep breath and began, with
admirable patience, the tedious task which unfolded in front of him and
which consisted of reading every single name in every single ballot paper.
Every single name! The poor man.
Now, if we take into account that they were 11 names in each list and that,
of the 350 neighbours, 286 voted , Mr Mayor read aloud 3,146 names that
evening. Next to him, his counsellors had the not less tedious task of
writing everything down.
At the beginning, the mayor started reading a few papers with the names I
was expecting, namely the official list, but soon I realised that some of
the names he was reading aloud weren’t in the list and didn’t correspond to
anyone having shown the least interest in being elected.
I had heard that you had the right to vote for someone who wasn’t in the
list, even for someone who didn’t want to stand for election but I didn’t
believe anyone could waste their time doing so. In theory this right sounded
really democratic but the whole concept felt so improbable that it was
difficult not to dismiss it as a waste of time. But I was wrong. Soon things
started to get more complicated. At the beginning I started just to notice
how an alien name would substitute here and there a candidate from the
official list. Then, as alternative full lists started to appeared, my jaw
started to drop.
As I recognised some of the names in the “alternative” lists, I soon
realised that the contestant list featured the members of the “unofficial”
opposition, mainly land owners who had been too disorganised, too lazy or
too egocentric to get together and constitute an official list.
I thought at first that it was just political sabotage what was making the
dépuillement into an interminable ritual but soon I realised that the
inhabitants of my village possessed a fine sense of humour, developed after
years of local elections.
These were some of the alternative lists that got a vote and were read, with
admirable patience, by the mayor:
* a list made up with those who were obviously thought the most beautiful
women in the village –my heart sunk when I realised I wasn’t there.
* a list featuring eleven members of the same family, some of them heavily
underage to dummy and nappy level.
* a list composed of the village’s elders, none of whom would probably last
the seven years of office term.
* a list of hunters, and one of fishermen.
* a list featuring members of the commission des fêtes.
* a list made by a chauvinist pig who had crossed out the names of the men
in the normal list and left only the females, and inserted himself in.
* a black-humoured list featuring the village’s soldiers, dead in the WWI,
whose names were carved on stone in our local monument aux morts.
* a list with the names of the main landowners of the village…
While the reading was going on I couldn’t believe that the whole thing could
be taken seriously but I was wrong. Every single name, in every single list
read by the mayor was carefully noted down by the secretary.
And everything would be officially recorded in the Prefecture.
–This is ridiculous – I said aloud.
–Ah non! – retorted someone sitting next to me –This is democracy. We have a
right to vote for who ever we want. At least at the local elections.
He was probably right. At least it showed that people were interested.
Perhaps even more than interested because everyone could see that this was
also the perfect opportunity to take revenge from past offences and to solve
personal vendettas. I realised this when the mayor read a
list which had only two names: one was the name of a very well known
land owner, the other of a woman who wasn’t his wife, and with whom he had
had a publicly known torrid affair.
The salle des fêtes exploded in a burst of gossip, complicity and
laughter and the two people involved and their respective spouses stood up
and left. Half an hour later, the same two names were again at the head of
another list but this time they were not alone. Next to them featured also
four men and four women who weren’t official couples but who had been known
to have extra-marital affairs with each other.
Nothing escapes to the almighty eye of village gossip.
A ballot paper containing not a list, but a series of insults to the mayor
himself and his mother, had to be invalidated after being noted down.
When the mayor read the last ballot paper, just before midnight, it turned
out that out of 286 voting papers, 105 neighbours of the village had had at
least one vote. I got none. Even my 86 years old neighbour got a vote but I
got none. This was a relief and
a disappointment at the same time, but one thing was clear: I was invisible.
Perhaps it was still an advantage.
The person who got more votes in the
village wasn’t the local mayor, but a Samantha Fox look alike
whose name wasn’t on the local list. She hadn’t stood up for election
but happened to be friendly with both political sides of the Mairie: the
official counsellors and the opposition.
Fortunately, the system that allows you to vote for whoever you want also
stipulates that you can turn down the unwanted honour of being chosen by the
majority. You don’t have to be
an élu, if you don’t want it, even if the entire male population has
voted for you. Our local film-star-in-the-making declined, the official list
was declared the winner, the mayor carried on being our mayor, and
everything went back to normal.
In spite of my invisibility complex I was relieved of not being amongst the
chosen ones. I couldn’t
take the responsibility of endless meetings and conseils municipaux.
Not yet, anyway. Maybe in the
next election I will put my name down the official list, but at the moment I
was glad to lift my glass to those men and women who had endured, and won,
the most fun local election ceremony I had ever witnessed.
© Clara Villanueva 2008
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