without getting political

I%26#39;d love to hear some the locals thoughts on yesterday%26#39;s referendum. Denys? raphy? ptegan?

How did you vote and why... it would be great if we could just keep this informative without getting political.

Everyone we know voted yes (my husband included), which means we live in a very insular, far from the mainstream little community, so I%26#39;d love to hear the arguements for voting no.

thx

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My husband, who is french, thinks it was more a vote against Chiroc than the constitution. That, and the dislike of globilization and the possible loss of the way things are run in France with vacation time, work, etc. It sure seems like it is a humilation for Chiroc to me. I read that Paris voted for it, but not the people out in the country side.

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I voted yes, but I think the arguements for voting no were against the actual government. I could see in the results that people from the Right voted yes at about 80%, and people from the left voted no in the same proportions. So for me, it is clear that everything has been mixed up and the no is more for our internal politic than for europe.

Some other people also voted no because they were afraid that we would lose our good social protection, our minimum salaries,...But they are a minority.

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phread, what was the question you voted on?

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I voted neither yes nor no, having arguments for both sides.

Still i don%26#39;t think that the people voted against Chirac%26#39;politics, their main fears was apparently that the constitution was too liberal, this is why most of the left voted against it. They fear that it might facilitate the privatization of many nationalised services (railway, mail delivery...). Also many workers fear that it would make it easy to delocate their company to another european country where the taxes are lower than in France.

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Many European countries seem to be pulling up their bridges and refilling the moats.

My feeling is that a lot of the no vote had to do with internal politics and dissatisfaction - for example, finding a job in France for most part has not been easy over the past few years for most French youth or people over 50, not to mention the others. There is little in the way of a fluid job market.

Labor is, and has been, amazingly stubborn about making reforms..... and, the government has been forced to cut expenditures. Smart businesses have pulled up their stakes and moved to the UK, or Eastern Europe, or China......

And, European Union expansion I believe was done too fast. The fear of Turkey entering the pack scares many French people.

The result of %26quot;no%26quot; I believe is that the French just shot itself in the foot- and perhaps this may finally be what cracks the economy....It won%26#39;t be pretty.....

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Well, in addition to all the certainly more intelligent and accurate analysis available in the media, I offer these anecdotes:

Nearly all the business people I know were very much in favor of %26quot;Yes;%26quot; people were going to rallies, getting out the vote, going to meetings, etc., but by last week the energy level was quite down and a loss appeared inevitable. When speaking with a some writers, publishers, musicians, artists after an opening last Thursday, here are some comments I heard, offered here without comment:

- %26quot;The Left cannot agree on a winning candidate, thereby allowing France to be governed by a Rightist government that has far less than 50% of the backing of the people. We can, however, agree on this %26quot;Non.%26quot; It%26#39;s a way to show our solidarity.%26quot;

- %26quot;I do not agree that we should have a European Prime Minister and President. Who will world leaders visit first, the president of France or of the EU? The Prime Minister could turn out to be a woman from Northen Ireland, for all we know.%26quot;

- %26quot;It is absurd for the government to ask us a yes-or-no question and then tell us we must vote %26quot;Yes.%26quot; Anyone who knows anything about this country should have seen this problem from the start.%26quot;

- %26quot;Everything in the constitution is about fiance and the ecomomy. It is a way for the Right to align with other conservative forces in Europe to permanently establish itself.%26quot;

- I heard no comments about Turkey, unemployment, cheap labor, and protection of pensions and lifestyle from the Leftists. I heard those issues expressed both in the media and by the %26quot;Yes%26quot; supporters as the %26quot;real%26quot; reason the vote would fail.

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I think as well people felt they were not consulted about the entrance of the ten last countries last year. Many people thought it was a lot at a time, to be fifteen countries, and then overnight being 25 countries.

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iamwoman

The vote was a referendum on the European Constitution.

The gov%26#39;t could have accepted the Constitiution in the National Assembly (Congress) but chose to put the question to the people... who came out with a resounding NON!

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Yes at the time the polls said the majority of people would vote yes in case of a referendum. So Chirac thought he wouldn%26#39;t take any risk by organising a referendum. Now he must regret it!

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Interesting to see this show up here. I%26#39;ve been following the lead up then the vote quite closely, simply because world politics are interesting to me, and I%26#39;m quite pleased to see all your responses to get an even better feel of how the people really think (not that the vote result wasn%26#39;t indication enough!)

I read the Globe and Mail (Canadian), CNN (American, of course), BBC (British) and TV5 online each day, and I%26#39;m always interested in the differences between them. Try it, depending on the story you might even get a giggle over it.

Thanks for the first hand insight!