The French advantage

Paul Lendvai believes Eastern Europe should look to France, where a man like Nicolas Sarkozy can become president: "The fact that in one week, the Paris-born son of a minor aristocratic Hungarian refugee and nephew of a Sephardic Jew from Thessalonica will become the president of France is - in view of the European past and present - an historical event. Sarkozy's election is, given the numerous underhand moves by Le Pen's people and the poisonous remark by François Bayrou about his 'roots,' impressive evidence of the equanimity and tolerance of French society. In his father's homeland, Hungary, right-wing conservative populists attack their critics or opponents as people 'with a foreign heart' or a 'foreign attitude.' In Serbia, nationalists bad-mouth moderate democrats as yes-men and stooges of foreigners. In Budapest or Belgrade and especially in Warsaw or Moscow, a freely elected president like Sarkozy, with similar roots, is hard to imagine."

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