Fascinated by French politics, Lesley Joines regrets she can't vote in national elections but she can do the next best thing

On four Sundays across April, May and June, the French made their way to 8500 polling stations across the country to elect their new President and MPs to represent 577 constituencies. One polling station - that in the public library on rue d'Oran in Cannes - had a unique distinction: one of the staff supervising the proceedings was British, and the only non-French person in the whole country entrusted with such a task.

Assesseur Lesley Joines is clearly proud of what she did during the election season. But what's her story? "I was brought up on politics - indeed, I was born on Guy Fawkes Day in 1955 which gave me an immediate link with parliamentary matters. More seriously, my father was local councillor in Hayward's Heath and Chairman of the local Conservative Party. He got me to understand that living in a democratic country was a great privilege and that you had to play your part. If I'd stayed in England I would probably have gone into local politics."

"Interested in French politics"
Instead she came to France. Why? "I went to medical school in London - the Middlesex - but I rather messed things up, I failed my pre-med anatomy twice and got into a relationship with a French chap who was training with the hospital rugby team. To cut short the purely personal story - let's leave that for another day - I'll just tell you that we got married and I wasn't happy. I don't know why but once we had children - I've got two girls, both now in their late teens - he turned violent. Life was very bad, I tell you, and for the best part of twenty years. The only positive outcome was that through my husband I got interested in French politics."

How did that happen? "We moved from London to Paris first - that was before we got married - and he used to bring friends home. My French was very patchy at first but I gradually realised that they were all National Front supporters, real hardcore types. Then I discovered that the family business had been acquired during the war from a Jewish family and things began to hang together. No way my political home was with Le Pen and when we moved to Cannes in 1979 I got involved with the respectable Right, so to say. That was with Giscard's UDF and I've still got a party card though I think Bayrou tried to take them in quite the wrong direction."

Not being able to vote must be very frustrating. "Very much so, though we can now vote in the municipal and European elections. I got divorced finally in 1999 and then got more actively involved with local politics." And how did she get accepted as an assesseur? "One day it occurred to me that I'd like to see at first hand how the voting system worked. I rang up the mairie and they just didn't know if as a foreigner I could take part. Finally my request went to the préfecture who decided that the participation of a non-French person is not forbidden, it must be allowed. And so I turned up at the library for the first round."

What happened exactly? "I met the chap in charge - a council employee - and the rest of the team and then got on with it. Just like that. Briefly, when people showed up at the door their names were checked on the electoral roll and they were given an envelope. Once inside their elector's card and carte d'identité were checked and they then picked up a ballot paper - or several different ones, to be discreet - with a candidate's name on it. They went into the polling booth and dropped their envelope containing their preferred name into the urn. Before they left, their elector's card was stamped so they couldn't vote again. And that was it."

Did everything go smoothly? "Very much so. No drama - like they had somewhere up in the North where an elderly woman cast her vote and dropped dead. Some of the older people got a bit confused and I just wonder how they'd manage with electronic voting. Anyway, we shut up shop at eight o'clock and then did the count. We got a few empty envelopes - abstentions - and a small number of spoilt ballot papers but we knew who'd win. Cannes is very much on the Right and only one polling station out of 56 gave a majority to Ségolène Royal and that by only seven votes." And how did she feel at the end of the day? "Rather tired but very happy I'd done my bit for French democracy. It was a wonderful turnout for the Presidentials! And, of course, I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to go into a booth and cast a vote myself. I'm a firm Sarko fan."

From Riviera Reporter 122, Aug/Sept 2007

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