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Andre Fontaine

For Andre Fontaine's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY

Feb 9, 2002

French election an open race

PARIS -- The first round of the French presidential election will take place in less than 100 days. Strange as it may seem, neither of the two main contenders, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac, has formally declared his candidacy.

COMMENTARY

Dec 26, 2001

Building on the euro's success

PARIS -- Created in 1360 to help pay the ransom for King John II the Good following his capture by the Black Prince's English forces at the battle of Poitiers, the French franc is living its final days. From Jan. 1, it, along with the currencies of most other Western European nations, will be replaced by the euro.

COMMENTARY

Dec 2, 2001

Chirac's competitive edge

PARIS -- So far, 10 men and two women have entered the race for the French presidential election in April and May. Only one of them has a small chance of being present in the second round -- Jean-Pierre Chevenement, former socialist minister for domestic affairs, whose hostility to the European Union, Corsican nationalism and rising street violence seems to bring him some support from the political right and left.

COMMENTARY

Aug 30, 2001

A bleak forecast for France

PARIS -- As always at this time of year in France, planes and trains are overcrowded and the highways are blocked by traffic jams. The French, who enjoy the longest vacations in the world -- an average of five weeks per year -- have begun returning home from their summer holidays.

COMMENTARY

Jul 28, 2001

Chirac defends credibility of leadership

PARIS -- Once again, the French people celebrated their national feast July 14, which marks the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille royal jail -- the beginning of the great 1789 Revolution.

COMMENTARY

Jul 6, 2001

Jospin facing an uphill battle

PARIS -- All governments lie. One could even say that the bigger the governments, the bigger their lies. Sometimes, however, it happens that a politician gives off a particular feeling of honesty, even of transparency. It has long been the case for French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, with his look of Swedish pastor. He even went so far as to claim "an inventory right" on former President Francois Mitterrand's legacy, meaning that some of his deeds couldn't be morally approved.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 28, 2001

Jospin still far from the top

PARIS -- Created 43 years ago by Gen. Charles de Gaulle, France's Fifth Republic has had 14 prime ministers but only five presidents. Most of these premiers have harbored an ambition to become head of state, but only two of them managed to fulfill this dream. Will Lionel Jospin be the third?

COMMENTARY

Mar 22, 2001

No winner in France's vote

PARIS -- A year before the 2002 general and presidential elections, the results of the municipal and local elections that took place the last two Sundays represent a major development in French politics. They will not ease the relationship between President Jacques Chirac and his likely rival next year, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Nor will they facilitate relations between the various factions of the right or the various components of the "plural left."

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 28, 2001

How the anti-Iraq raids played in France

PARIS -- It was hardly a surprise that less than a month after U.S. President George W. Bush's inauguration, the U.S. Air Force should have launched a raid against Iraqi missile batteries and radars close to Baghdad. The flights of the U.S. and British jets supposed to protect the "no-fly" zones where the Iraqi Kurds and Shiites live had been increasingly disturbed by Iraqi missiles. Despite some 8,000 strikes directed against Iraq in recent years and sanctions adopted by the United Nations, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had managed to do several things: to rebuild with most of the Arab monarchies the links that had been damaged in 1990 by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait; to smuggle some 400,000 barrels of oil per day to his neighbors; and to proceed in the absence of foreign control with his missile-building and atomic-research programs, leading Israel to fear the worst from a country that has made no secret of its desire to destroy it.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 26, 1999

Upbeat ending to 20th century

PARIS -- A number of problems continue to darken the world as it prepares for a new century and a new millennium: chronic warfare in Afghanistan, Africa and Columbia; widespread terrorism; a stalemate in Kosovo; fear over the plans of "rogue states" such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran; the refusal of the United States, Russia and China to give up the production of antipersonnel mines; the likelihood that the U.S. -- whose senate has already rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- will open a new chapter in the arms race with its new antiballistic-missile program; growing tension between Moscow (increasingly backed by Beijing) and Washington, the abject failure of the WTO meeting in Seattle; the spread of AIDS, environmental destruction, hunger and poverty in the developing world and soaring unemployment and crime in many supposedly developed countries.

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 27, 1999

Jospin rides high, blessed by luck and skill

PARIS -- When Lionel Jospin was appointed prime minister of France in June 1997, there were not many people willing to bet on his longevity in office. The "plural left" majority on which he had to rely looked too divided on most issues, from Europe to immigration, to enable him -- or so it seemed at first -- to come up with solutions to the worrying economic situation he had inherited. He also lacked the broad electoral basis without which no government can survive for long: In many French constituencies, the left had won only because the extreme-right National Front put the left's candidate on the second ballot in order to outflank its archenemy, the traditional right. The rupture between NF leader Jean-Marie le Pen and his first deputy, Bruno Megret, however, has changed this picture.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 25, 1999

Cohabitation still confounds

PARIS -- The French attach so much importance to their government institutions that they change them more often than any other people. They've had five republics and 16 constitutions in the past 200 or so years!

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 1, 1999

France's right on the run

PARIS -- The French political scene is presently -- and probably for sometime to come -- dominated by the results of the European parliamentary election held June 13. Many commentators spoke of an earthquake. Here are the reasons why.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 2, 1999

France's Corsican question

PARIS -- "France," according to one of its best-known poets and political thinkers, Paul Valery, "is the most heterogeneous country that ever existed." The present tragedy in Kosovo makes this sound hyperbolic, yet there is an element of truth in it. The French who live on the shores of the Mediterranean, for instance, are closer in many ways to the shore dwellers of other Mediterranean countries than they are to the inhabitants of Brittany, Burgundy or Alsace -- who themselves present many physical and cultural contrasts. No wonder these varied peoples resisted so strenuously the Capetian kings' centuries-long attempts to bring them under their crown through wars, purchases and weddings. When the French Revolution took place, the moderate Girondist party called for a more decentralized state that would take account of the peculiarities of France's various regions. But the Girondists were defeated by the Jacobins, who overthrew the monarchy only to follow in turn its firmly unitarian tradition. A great admirer of the Roman Empire, Napoleon Bonaparte built in the imperial spirit many institutions that have in many respects survived him.

COMMENTARY

Mar 24, 1999

A testing summit for the EU

PARIS -- In many respects, the main body of the European Union is the European Commission, the mass resignation of which was announced last week. The commission's president and its 19 other members are appointed for five years by the European Council, which consists of the heads of state or of government of the 15 member states. The commissioners, who are supposed to act independently of their own countries' governments, are responsible only collectively and only to the European Parliament. Never since the creation of the European Community in 1956 has a commission been overthrown. No wonder some of its members had developed a feeling of impunity, unavoidably leading to various abuses.

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[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

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