Debunking Jean-Francois Copé's Ramadan pain au chocolat tale

The campaign for the presidency of the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) has taken a decided turn to the right in recent days.

At least for one of the candidates still left in the race, Jean-Francois Copé, the party's current secretary general.

If he runs out the winner against former prime minister François Fillon in November, the chances are the UMP will be able to drop any pretence of being a centre-right one.

The signs are there.

First up there's his aptly entitled "Manifesto pour une droite décomplexée", extracts of which you can read in Le Figaro and which illustrate how Copé believes there's an "anti-white discrimination" in some areas of France.

And presumably that so-called discrimination can be found, if you follow Copé's line of thinking, in the very same areas as the ones quoted in a campaign speech he gave last Friday in the southeastern town of Draguignan.

Jean--François Copé in Draguignan (screenshot from i>Télé report)

Apart from banging on about the current government's mishandling of the country which is, after all, what a party in opposition is supposed to do, Copé also revealed a little more of what we might expect from the UMP with him at the head.


You see, apparently he can "understand the exasperation of some people who return home from work in the evening to learn that their son has had his pain au chocolate taken from him, just as he was leaving school, by thugs who explained to him that Ramadan means fasting."

Take a listen to the clip.



Right. Yes definitely an "uninhibited Right" and not a direction some other leading UMP figures  would share, as former finance minister François Baroin was clear to point out at the weekend.

Quite apart from the offensive and inflammatory nature of Copé's remark with its obvious undertones which surely don't need to be spellt out (but have been nonetheless by many over the past couple of days in what the French almost lovingly refer to as a "polemic") there's also an essential problem with his little anecdote.

Timing.

When was the example quoted by Copé as leading to his enlightened understanding of some parents' annoyance supposed to have taken place exactly?

2012? Impossible as many have since pointed out because Ramadan fell during the school holidays

2011? Equally unfeasible for exactly the same reason.

So that leaves the most recent possible date for such a  act 2010
So in other words, poor old Copé has been waiting two whole years to bring the plight of that child to the public's attention and to show just how in tune he is with the thinking of M. et Madame Average French citizen?

Yes M. Copé, let the French eat their pain au chocolat.

Summer camp monitors from Gennevilliers - suspended and then reinstated

The case of four temporary instructors sacked and then reinstated by Jacques Bourgoin, the mayor of the town of Gennevilliers in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, is one that has made both the domestic and international news.

Jacques Bourgoin (screenshot from AFP video)

And you could be forgiven for believing that on the face of it, Bourgoin's decision appeared to be one that, in the words of the Conseil français du culte musulman (French council of the Moslem faith, CFCM) was "an attack on religious freedom".

After all the headlines such as "Sacked over Ramadan fast" or "French Moslem suspended in Ramadan fasting row" certainly gave that impression.

There's no doubt that Bourgoin's U-turn to reinstate the four men in an effort to "avoid controversy" was more than a little late as the damage had been done.

But looking at the background to the decision, you can see that while he undoubtedly mishandled what was after all a sensitive issue and one bound to "raise indignation" once it became part of the public domain, Bourgoin had the best interests of the children at heart

Briefly, the four men had been employed as monitors to accompany children from the town to a summer camp in southwestern France.

They were sacked on July 20, the first day of Ramadan, after inspectors paid a visit, discovered they were observing their fast and, "not respecting the terms of their contracts in a way which could have endangered the physical safety of the children for whom they were responsible."

In other words, as far as Bourgoin and Gennevilliers' councillors were concerned, by not eating or drinking the men couldn't carry out their jobs properly.

And Bourgoin surely had good reason and didn't want a case of history potentially repeating itself.

Because in 2009 during a similar summer camp involving children from the town, a monitor fell asleep behind the wheel of the minibus in which they were travelling, causing an accident and seriously injuring one child.

She - the monitor - too had been fasting.

Of course there's the valid argument put forward by the CFCM president Mohammed Moussaoui that worldwide, "Hundreds of millions of people fast during Ramadan every year without it having a detrimental effect on their ability to work."

But equally, Bourgoin had a moral and legal obligation to ensure the well-being of children in the council's care and simply didn't want to take the risk.

A tricky one - not helped by the way in which it was handled - or reported.