Cantona takes shot at French presidency

Footballer-turned-actor Eric Cantona, after failing in a quixotic bid to destroy global banking, is lining up a long-odds shot at the French presidency, according to a report Tuesday.

Published: 10 January 2012 08:55 CET

The ex-Manchester United player, known to English fans as King Eric, has written to French mayors seeking the 500 signatures from elected officials that are necessary for a presidential bid, Liberation said in a front-page report.

But in an editorial, the newspaper said Cantona was applying one of his legendary footballing feints on the political field, using the unlikely presidential run to secure his real aim – help for the poorly housed.

In his letter to city mayors dated January 4, Cantona did not mention whether he saw himself as a potential candidate for president.

But the 45-year-old said he was “a citizen very much aware of our times”, which he argued offer “too-limited chances” to the young and generate “violent” and “systematic” injustices.

He said he felt obliged to speak up “at a time when our country faces difficult choices” and that the current economic uncertainty gave him “a sense of my responsibility”.

He added that getting the 500 mayors to sign up to his message on housing and poverty “would allow me to send a simple but clear message; a message of truth and respect”.

Speaking to Liberation, Cantona said he “chose the housing issue as it seems to me to be essential and concerns tens of millions of people”.

“I had to act at a time when I was likely to be heard.”

The presidential election will get under way in April.

As a player Cantona was known for both his genius and ill-discipline, as well as his often colourful and incomprehensible remarks.

Late in 2010 he entered the political and economic fray, calling on his compatriots to withdraw cash en masse as a way to bring banking to its knees – although it emerged that his actress wife had appeared in a TV bank advert.

French and European politicians and bankers condemned Cantona as irresponsible, naive and misguided, and his call to action was not taken up.

Considered one of the greats of the game, Cantona retired from professional football in 1997 and has since turned to acting, notably in director Ken Loach’s “Looking For Eric”.

France has in recent weeks been shaken by a series of attacks on schoolchildren by their peers, in particularly the fatal beating earlier this month of Shemseddine, 15, outside Paris.

The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party has accused Attal of not doing enough on security as the anti-immigration party soars ahead of the government coalition in polls for the June 9th election.

Speaking in Viry-Chatillon, the town where Shemseddine was killed, Attal condemned the “addiction of some of our adolescents to violence”, calling for “a real surge of authority… to curb violence”.

“There are twice as many adolescents involved in assault cases, four times more in drug trafficking, and seven times more in armed robberies than in the general population,” he said.

Measures will include expanding compulsory school attendance to all the days of the week from 8am to 6pm for children of collège age (11 to 15).

“In the day the place to be is at school, to work and to learn,” said Attal, who was also marking 100 days in office since being appointed in January by President Emmanuel Macron to turn round the government’s fortunes.

Parents needed to take more responsibility, said Attal, warning that particularly disruptive children would have sanctions marked on their final grades.

OPINION: No, France is not suffering an unprecedented wave of violence

Promoting an old-fashioned back-to-basics approach to school authority, he said “You break something – you repair it. You make a mess – you clear it up. And if you disobey – we teach you respect.”

Attal also floated the possibility of children in exceptional cases being denied the right to special treatment on account of their minority in legal cases.

Thus 16-year-olds could be forced to immediately appear in court after violations “like adults”, he said. In France, the age of majority is 18, in accordance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Macron and Attal face an uphill struggle to reverse the tide ahead of the European elections. Current polls point to the risk of a major debacle that would overshadow the rest of the president’s second mandate up to 2027.

A poll this week by Ifop-Fiducial showed the RN on 32.5 percent with the government coalition way behind on 18 percent.