French restaurant pegs meal price to election result

“Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the only candidate who is pissing everybody off at the moment,” says restaurant owner Jean-Michel Jolivald in an interview with La République des Pyrénées, “so I’ve decided to throw a party in his honour.”

Jolivald explains that the price of the meal at his election night special will depend on Mélenchon’s result in the first round of the election, which takes place on Sunday.

Mélenchon heads the Front de Gauche, a far-left coalition that wants a 100 percent tax on anyone who earns more than 360,000 euros a year. Polls say he will garner between 13 and 17 percent of the vote.

“If the Front de Gauche gets 12 percent of the vote, my customers will pay €12 for their meal,” says Jolivald, who owns a restaurant called La Terasse in the village of Bedous.

The owner jokes that the idea behind his election special would not have worked with all the candidates running for the presidential election.

“An evening in honour of Philippe Poutou [the candidat of the New Anti-Capitalist Party] would not have worked, he’s credited with 1.5 percent of the vote,” says Jolivald.

“At that rate we would have been serving peanuts and water!”