Slam-bang action

I still can’t shake off this sneaking suspicion that the BBC is biased against Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate for President of France. I got that sense when I watched the BBC’s coverage of the first round’s immediate aftermath, and (especially) when I read the website’s take on the results. But I must say I found the BBC’s coverage of Wednesday night’s presidential debate, between Royal and frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy, even, balanced.

By all accounts, the debate was a slam-bang affair, featuring dust-up after dust-up, an unexpected role reversal, and memorable quotes galore. It also went overtime. The transcripts were almost immediately available online, on many websites, and except for a few lines here and there read as though they were from the same English translation.

At least two newspapers found the thinly veiled hostility between the two candidates a reminder of a rather familiar domestic scene.

The Australian: At times the verbal argument resembled everyday conflicts between men and women, as Mr Sarkozy accused his opponent of “losing her cool” and Ms Royal charged him with being “condescending” and “contemptuous”.

The New York Times: By midway, Ms. Royal’s perpetual smile disappeared from her face. Their tone was reminiscent of a couple bickering at the breakfast table, with the husband barely restraining his sense of superiority and the wife attacking him for not listening to her.

I read as much of the coverage as I could, and caught the reports on CNN and BBC; I was driven by an almost partisan sense of participation (I am pulling for Sego) as well as a sense of possibility: This is how our elections should be conducted.

A battle of ideas, at least as far as ideas can be phrased in public debate; strong party identities; a run-off followed by a face-off between the top two candidates, to create a true majority mandate; not least, an election system (involving over 40 million voters, roughly the same size as our electorate) that provides the results within hours of the last vote.

This possibility, this scenario, reminds me of something I realized some three years ago: GMA’s biggest lost opportunity. Years from now, she will be remembered for her failure to reform the country’s fraud-marred electoral system — a cancer of the body politic that she herself diagnosed in 2002, when she announced her decision not to run for President. Ah, those were the days.

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