Elections 2007: The CICNS Test Bench

Elections 2007

The CICNS Test Bench

CICNS proposes a dialogue to all the candidates for the presidency of the Republic, for the ballot of April and May 2007, in order to learn their own relationship to spirituality and to question them on their intentions regarding the spiritual minorities in France (several hundred thousand voters are concerned by an alternative spiritual or therapeutic approach).

A questionnaire was sent to them at the end of January 2007 to solicit from them a declaration of commitment towards the spiritual minorities in France. Their answers (and their possible evasions) will be published progressively on this page. Good points and bad points are awarded, and an assessment presented on our mailing list during the last three months before the election.

Read our letter to the first-round candidates

Read the archives presenting all the first-round candidates

The Second-Round Candidates

Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP)

born in 1955

Good point: Good point: Read extracts from Nicolas Sarkozy’s book

Good point: M. Sarkozy urges other politicians not to content themselves with speaking “of the economy, of the social, of the environment, of security. We must also broach spiritual questions”. For Nicolas Sarkozy, “the moral dimension is more solid, more rooted, when it proceeds from a spiritual, religious approach, rather than when it seeks its source in political debate or in the republican model”. It remains to be determined whether this spirituality is akin, in his mind, to that of George Bush or of Mahatma Gandhi?

Good point: “To be president of the Republic is an asceticism, it is the forgetting of self, and doubtless the putting in parentheses of one’s personal happiness, of one’s feelings, of one’s interests, so as to have in mind nothing but the happiness of the French (…) “I will not lie to you, I will not betray you, I will not shirk. I ask for your confidence so that together everything becomes possible” (This quotation may certainly be received dubiously, but we note that the fact of expressing it, without prejudging his capacity to act in this direction or not, is an indication of M. Sarkozy’s spirit. That is obviously judged positive by our association).

Bad point: His muscular formulas, probably aimed at gathering the greatest support of the population, have lost all the subtlety present in the statements of the preceding “good point”. The events of the banlieues, category 1 dogs, the judge of the Outreau affair or juvenile delinquency: everything seems to be an occasion for resorting to the most demagogic promises. Yesterday, the young people of the banlieues lacked spiritual inspiration, today they lack police repression. On one side, a “liberal” policy which opens the door to freedom of conscience, and on the other an all-out repressive programme which sows confusion. Where is the real Nicolas Sarkozy?

Facts: In October 2002, M. Sarkozy, Minister of the Interior, comments on the waywardness of the MILS and advocates an evolution while yielding to the formulas of the pensée unique in his introduction: “We shall have no weakness towards the dérives sectaires, which are all the more condemnable in that they touch people in situations of weakness (…) But we run up against a difficulty: we must respect another great principle which comes to us from the declaration of the rights of man and of the citizen and from the law of 1905, the respect of all religions and beliefs. If the mission’s balance sheet is excellent from every point of view, it has happened that the behaviour of its leader (Alain Vivien, editor’s note) provoked polemics which turned out to be counter-productive.”

Extract from a speech of 11 February 2007:

“I am proud to be the child of a country where conscience is free (…) If I am elected, I shall not be there for myself (…), I want to be the president who reconciles the religions and laïcité, and the believers with the secular (…). I want to go and see those one never goes to see (…), to meet those one never meets. (…) I want to go and speak to those who say they are victims of discrimination. (…) I want to meet those who do not agree with me, I want to listen to their point of view (…) because they too (…) have something to teach me, they too are France. (…) It is a great wrong for our country to have lost the value of respect: respecting others. (…) Those who are rigid are weak people (…) The presidential function demands that one open one’s mind, (…) it demands a form of asceticism. (…) this pensée unique that I fight… (…) I want an irreproachable democracy (…) where individual liberties are respected… (…) It is not the institutions that weaken democracy but the lack of political will, the lack of intellectual honesty, the lack of clear-sightedness (…) I want to speak of liberty (…). Man has been deprived of choosing his own rhythm of work, there is the error of the 35 hours. (…) Families have been forbidden to choose their children’s school. (…) Prudence is to be in truth. (…) I feel I have the spirit of a challenger (…) Everything can become possible if I manage to bring the French together.

M. Sarkozy did not answer our letter

Ségolène Royal (PS)

born in 1953

Bad point: for Ségolène Royal, who does not publish the questions CICNS posed on her site

Bad point: Ségolène Royal has taken Arnaud Montebourg, former lawyer for the ADFI (in particular in the Paturel affair), as spokesman.

Bad point: The party most hostile to the spiritual minorities?

Bad point: Ségolène Royal is at the origin of a “plan against the cults” presented in 1999 to the education-authority inspectors. Her presentation takes up the usual anti-cult clichés: “The cult movements use front establishments to inculcate their doctrines.” or again “Examples are not lacking, alas, of depersonalisation techniques used by the cults” and “the public prosecutor may, if he judges it opportune, prosecute parents who refuse the child the right to instruction (…) I add that the education-authority inspectors may call on the public forces in case of refusal of inspection by the families and schools inspected”.

According to a research institute, the success rate on standardised tests was 65 to 80% for children schooled at home against 50% for children in state schools.

Bad point: A “participative debate” on the subject of “children’s rights” and their protection against the “cults” was organised by the Socialist Party on 30 January 2007, at the call of Serge Blisko, deputy of the 10th constituency of Paris and mayor of the 13th arrondissement. The presence of the “great witness” Catherine Picard augurs well for the “great neutrality” of the debates. “The tenor of these debates will be transmitted to Ségolène Royal’s team to nourish the project of our candidate, the only one capable of bringing together and making the left win,” declared Serge Blisko.

Facts: Read the religion of socialism on Psinfo: ”(…) Jaurès thinks that every man is naturally inhabited by a religious aspiration, an aspiration to the infinite. Etymologically, religion is the bond. How to ensure a bond between men? That is the major political question. Jaurès considers that Christianity, which he inherited from his mother, betrayed the essence of the religious, that is to say the possibility of living in community and of flourishing as a man, and that only socialism will make it possible to realise this essence of the religious, because it will give every man the faculty of realising himself and of going towards justice. Socialism is therefore not one religion among others, it is the very essence of the religious. a religion which rests on liberty and justice.” What does the candidate think of this rapprochement between socialism and religion?

Extract from a speech of 11 February 2007:

(…) I want to make France the country of environmental excellence (moratorium on GMOs, reduce nuclear power to 50% of energy production) (…) the protection of the environment is incompatible with liberalism (…) I need you to build a France which resembles itself and which gathers itself together. (…) With me, never again will politics be made without you (…) The school is the crucible where the future citizens are formed. It is going through a deep crisis. Will it keep its promise of equality of chances tomorrow? Teachers, you will be supported by the Republic, without your having to fear inspections that are a little too rigid. Compulsory schooling fixed at 3 years. I shall re-establish the Handiscol plan I created when I was Minister of Education. All disabled children will be able to enrol at school from nursery school, and it will fall to the school and no longer to the parents to justify a refusal (…) A landscape we love, a great history with sublime moments (…) and in the background the great light, never extinguished, of the French Revolution. (…) France must show itself intractable for the respect of the values linked to its tradition of humanism and light.

Mme Royal did not answer our letter