FRANCE: Lara Marlowewas in Neuilly-sur-Seine as the right-wing candidate arrived to cast his vote
There must have been people in Neuilly who voted against Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday, but in three hours at the polling station on the Île de la Jatte, I couldn't find one.
When the right-wing presidential candidate finally arrived to cast his vote, in a black limousine with opaque windows, well-wishers applauded and shouted "bravo, bravo". "Who says Nicolas Sarkozy isn't welcome in the banlieue? Isn't this the banlieue?" joked François de La Brosse, the communications executive who founded NSTV (Nicolas Sarkozy TV), an internet television station that would turn any dictator green with envy.
Sarkozy has been persona non grata in France's immigrant suburbs since he referred to delinquents there as "scum". Neuilly, population 60,000, is a suburb of Paris, but on a per capita basis it is also France's richest municipality.
In Sarkoland, cars are not torched at night, the only blacks and Arabs are diplomats or heirs to oil fortunes. Joggers, not muggers, ply its tree-shaded pavements to the sound of birdsong. To paraphrase Baudelaire, all is luxe, calme et volupté.
When Sarkozy exits the school-turned-polling station with his wife Cecilia and two step-daughters, Cecilia looks unhappy; there were rumours throughout the campaign that she had left her husband, again.
Sarkozy says he's "awaiting with serenity the judgment of the French". Serenity is not a characteristic often associated with him. His rival, the socialist candidate Ségolène Royal, refers to herself as "serene". With Sarkozy leading in opinion polls since January, there was little doubt he would make it to the run-off, but when asked whom he hoped to face, he remembered advisers urging him to be humble: "I don't know if I'll be in the second round," he said, in a tone both humorous and sarcastic.
De La Brosse, the communications executive and a family friend of the Sarkozys, says the candidate doesn't read the multitude of books, magazines and newspapers which attack him. "He protects himself. It's not pleasant to read dreadful things about yourself . . . He's like an Olympic finalist. I never saw Carl Lewis turn around to see who was running behind him."
Sarkozy would like France to resemble his fiefdom. It was here that the young Nicolas grew up, became a city councillor at the age of 22 and seized the mayor's job six years later.
As mayor for 19 years, then president of the surrounding Hauts-de-Seine department, Sarkozy won the loyalty of his subjects. In the last municipal election in 2001, he won 76.88 per cent of the vote in the first round.
Yesterday, a bystander recalled how a man took children hostage in a local school in 1993. The man had explosives strapped around his waist, but Sarkozy negotiated with him for three days, repeatedly entering the classroom, trading food, water and a television for the liberation of children.
Is there anyone in Neuilly who did not vote for Sarkozy? I asked Monsieur de La Brosse. "I don't know," he said. "I saw some dogs." Small white poodles and terriers were de rigueur at the polling station, along with designer jeans, Louis Vuitton handbags, bleached blonde hair and a suntan.
Sarkozy is in the habit of sparing Neuilly unpleasantness. For example, he built a traffic tunnel beneath his mother's apartment in the avenue Charles de Gaulle, to eliminate noise and exhaust fumes. And despite a French law requiring all cities to reserve 20 per cent of housing for the underprivileged, the rate in Neuilly is 2 per cent.
"He made sure Neuilly kept its personality," said a resident who strolled along the quayside where Seurat painted his pointillist masterpieces. "There's a very strong identity, like a tribe here. He preserved that. We don't have problems with security, cleanliness, cultural belonging. Twenty-five per cent of the population is Jewish. There are Arabs and Iranians. There are a lot of Portuguese concierges. It has diversity, but it's well managed."
Sarkozy inspires Messianic fervour among supporters like Lucie Chalret Du Rieu (25), a computer programmer for an estate agent. The young woman came from Paris' 16th district to watch her idol vote yesterday morning.
"This is the first time I've had confidence in a politician," she says. "When he talks, you understand him. Sarkozy says out loud what people think to themselves." I remind Chalret Du Rieu that the extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen used to say exactly the same thing, of himself. She doesn't like Le Pen, yet she uses his language: "When you job-hunt, which has happened to me, I think it's fair that a French person should have priority. After all, we're in our own country." Olivier Laczny (39), a civil servant at the finance ministry, is out for his Sunday morning jog. Why does Sarkozy inspire such intense reactions of adoration and revulsion?
"This is the first time we've had a truly right-wing candidate," Mr Laczny replies. "Part of French society is still Marxist. We need a cultural, ideological revolution." Laczny thinks the debate over the Islamic headscarf and the November 2005 race riots "opened people's eyes".
"There are things we don't have to accept," he explains. "We didn't ask them to come here." Michelle Haye (58) works for the unemployment fund UNEDIC. She and her husband own a modest one-bedroom flat facing the Île de la Jatte. She has lost track of the number of times she's voted for Sarkozy; for mayor, for the National Assembly, in departmental elections.
Haye dismisses reports that Sarkozy ceded city land to a property developer in exchange for a cut-price apartment as "nit-picking" and "petty". The candidate's friendship with the mayor of neighbouring Levallois, who was convicted of hiring servants with municipal funds, bothers her more. There are other "little things" that worry her, including Sarkozy's call for a ministry of immigration and national identity. "We don't follow him blindly," says her husband Jean-François.
In Sarkoland the right-wing candidate's brazen courtship of Le Pen voters is not entirely approved of; residents of quiet Neuilly do not want to be mistaken for extremists. But promises of lower taxes, the abolition of death duties and an end to the 35-hour working week are irresistible. And yes, there's the hope that Sarkozy will finally achieve what Le Pen has promised for 30 years - an end to what they see as "free-loading" by immigrants who live in the real banlieue.