French par set to remain heavily white: Group

Paris, June 5: Whatever the result of this month's parliamentary elections in France, the Assemblee Nationale will remain one of the whitest legislative bodies in western Europe, a black rights body said today.

CRAN, the Representative Council of Black Associations, presented a study showing that only 19 of 3,777 candidates standing for the main parties is black, well below the proportion of black people in the French population.

The current parliament contains not a single black deputy from mainland France, although it has a number from France's overseas departments.

''There are big universalist speeches but they hide a reality that is a lot less glorious,'' CRAN spokesman Louis-Georges Tin told a news conference.

This month's elections, where at least three or four black candidates are considered to have a good chance of winning, may bring some change but they will represent a tiny fraction of the 577 seats in the National Assembly.

The left wing daily ''Liberation'' carried the headline ''The White House'' and said that the 2007 parliament would be ''essentially, obstinately, archaically mono-coloured''.

Figures on the ethnic make-up of French society and institutions are often difficult to obtain because official bodies consider that to take such factors into consideration would undermine the presumption of equality of citizenship.

But according to a survey this year by TNS Sofres, some 3.86 percent of adults questioned said they considered themselves black, equivalent to around 1,865,000 people.

Newly elected President Nicolas Sarkozy has pledged to fight racism in public life and has underlined his commitment with high-profile appointments such as justice minister Rachida Dati, the daughter of poor North African immigrants.

But the main parties are reluctant to introduce formal quotas which many say would be divisive and open to abuse.

As in many other western countries, race is a difficult subject in France where the republican ideals of ''liberte, egalite, fraternite'' contrast with a daily reality of racism and discrimination for many ethnic minorities.

In France, the tensions were laid dramatically bare in riots in 2005 that shook the country's poor, multi-ethnic suburbs.

Tin said that despite rhetoric from across the political spectrum supporting minorities, his group struggled to produce the figures in the face of grudging support from most of the main parties.

''This effort to expose the situation may have a healthy effect,'' he said.

The association says that none of the main parties from the Communists, Greens and Socialists on the left to the ruling UMP on the right has done enough to bring in more black candidates, instead favouring sitting deputies, who tended to be white.

''The problem is not so much at the level of voters as at the level of the party machines,'' he said.

Reuters>