The "dumb pcf" anecdote, or how the PCF would have got his 20-deputies group, but couldn't.

In the south of Grenoble there is this "red suburb" : two large, worker towns (Echirolles and Saint Martin d'Hères) which have had PCF mayors for a few decades, that make up the 2nd circonscription of Isère with a few other municipalities that are more bourgeois, and thus have PS mayors.

The 2nd has also had PCF MPs for a very long time (it was set up this way by Pasqua, gerrymandering the left vote in a single district so that another district, the 5th, could get a right wing MP from time to time). The old PCF MP reaches retirement age in 2007. The PCF has two ideal candidates for the district : the mayor of Echirolles, Renzo Sulli(There's been a lot of Italian immigration in Grenoble. We've got 40 pizzeria all lined up side by side on the Quai Saint Laurent (a marvel of competition, the sight is really impressive and unbelievable. They are probably used for money laundering) and regular maffia shootings), and the mayor of Saint Martin d'Hères, and natural heir to Gilbert Biessy, René Proby.

Well, Proby got the PCF nomination, and Sulli decides he should be candidate too. Yep, that's one of the two PCF-dissident candidates in France.

The result of the first round is, Sulli gets 13.6%, Proby gets 10.6%, and the PS candidate, Issindoux, gets  22,6% : a single PCF candidate would have gotten into the 2nd round, and would be MP by now.

Oh, and BTW, Issindoux is the mayor of one of those more bourgeois, PS suburbs towns, Gières (my hometown). He used to be top administrator at one of Grenoble's universities (which actually are for the most part located in Saint Martin d'Hères and Gières).

5 years ago he was leading a movement to expel the tzigans from the campus. (They are thiefs ! they degrade public toilets ! They use up parking space ! They have nothing to do on the campus !). Of course, the Grenoble Metro had failed to provide the legally mandated space for nomad tzigans. But the worse is that he organized a demonstration against those tzigans, in april 2002. Smack in the middle of the presidential campaign that saw Le Pen in the second round.

I'm not much of a fan of Issindoux. As a mayor, he is secretive, cares little for the population (which won't elect a right wing mayor, so he has the position for life), but is better at navigating his way through the Grenoble political class, and getting a good position in the communauté de communes.

So, instead of a PCF group, the district is getting another PS apparachick, semi-corrupt and very far from démocratie participative. Too bad.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères