For two years, Karim Ben Cheikh held meetings of «circus» like planes. But since the dissolution of the National Assembly on June 9 and the calling of legislative elections, the pace of travel by the representative of French people abroad in the 9e constituency has suddenly accelerated.
With 16,000 km covered in twelve days of campaigning, the outgoing deputy Generation. s, invested by the New Popular Front (NFP), cannot take advantage of its carbon footprint to beat the National Rally (RN) in the only left-wing bastion abroad, as large as sixteen times France, bringing together sixteen countries North and West Africa and more than 155,000 registered in 2024.
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Karim Ben Cheikh is now accustomed to campaigning at full speed. This is the third time in three years that he has taken up his pilgrim’s staff again, the 2022 election having been invalidated by the Constitutional Council for a ” dysfunction “ in electronic voting. The former diplomat has nothing to worry about: in 2023, he won the second round with a 25-point lead over Caroline Traverse (Renaissance). But “the prospect of the RN coming to power puts a knot in my stomach”he confides.
He is not the only one. Among the forty French people living in Senegal who came to listen to him in Dakar on Tuesday June 25, there was a majority of dual nationals. Franco-Senegalese, Franco-Lebanese, French descendants of Senegalese riflemen who fought for France, shocked by the proposal of the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, to exclude dual nationals from certain so-called “strategic” public positions.
“The danger exists”
At 80 years old, Laurence Carpentier, mixed race descendant of a French settler – “ general treasurer-paymaster of Martinique arrived in Dakar in 1848 » – came on Wednesday with two of her friends who had difficulty moving around with canes. “This hatred resonates here, she says, and makes us binationals fear a shift into the unknown. »
“Jordan Bardella will also remove the right from the ground. What will it be after? The right to filiation for the acquisition of nationality? France is my homeland and my history. I don’t want it to be sullied by Jordan Bardella whose measures will in reality only accentuate anti-French sentiment.” believes Birahima Camara, president of a French association in Senegal, grandson of a rifleman and father of a daughter who is a lawyer at the Paris bar.
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“I am not afraid of the word dam, because the danger exists, agrees Hassan Bahsoun, pillar of the French in Dakar. For the first time since the Liberation, we run the risk of a far-right government. We would therefore have two types of French. Before Bardella, only one politician had dared to do this: Pétain, under Vichy, excluding Jews from certain professions. »
If the votes of a majority of French people in Dakar seem to have gone to Karim Ben Cheikh since the last two legislative elections in 2022 and 2023, those of Saly could also renew their confidence in him. In the small seaside town located some 80 km from the Senegalese capital, many French people – mainly retirees attracted by the low cost of living – voted for Marine Le Pen or Eric Zemmour in the 2022 presidential election. But in both In the last legislative elections they placed Mr. Ben Cheikh in the lead.
French people “forgotten” by France
After having organized around ten meetings during these two years in office, the elected official brought together around forty people, abstentionists and right-wing voters, on Tuesday at the Saly golf course. “I have always voted on the rightproclaims Gilles Lhoste. But I must admit that our MP responded.”
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The former French consul general in Beirut, Lebanon, was able to use his knowledge of the diplomatic apparatus and fought in the National Assembly to raise the issue of dependency, small pensions, school scholarships and the Fund. of French people abroad (CFE) whose contributions continue to increase and its disinvestment in consular networks cut by half of their budget and their full-time staff in the space of thirty years. “French people abroad are often caricatured as tax exiles, sweeps away Mr. Ben Cheikh. But I mostly see social exiles. »
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The French “forgotten” of France, this is how Mathias, Alain, Serge, and Jacques perceive themselves, four friends sitting at the table like every lunchtime at Délices de Coumba, a creperie well known to Salysians. “With a pension of 293 euros, explains Alain Huyche, I don’t even have the right to minimum old age because I live in Senegal. Once here, I am no longer considered by France”laments anyone who could be tempted by the RN, “not out of racism, but for real change”. “Wait, you don’t even know the name of the RN candidate in 9e »dries his neighbor on the left.
« I hold on to dual nationality, calls out Jacques. And on Sunday, I will vote for the first time. » Expected to be important in France, the mobilization could also grow in the 9e constituency of French people living abroad, given the large number of proxies collected to date. In 2022 and 2023, participation rates peak at 18% and 10%.
