Up until June 7, dozens of candidates across several continents, from Buenos Aires to Toronto and from Algiers to Cape Town, will be scrambling for public votes, some cast on the Internet, to share out 79 seats. This is not the latest international reality show, but the very serious – and largely ignored – election to the Assembly of the French Abroad (Assemblée des Français de l'étranger – AFE).

 
This year’s vote will tell whether e-voting can stem the downward trend in voter turnout for AFE elections. It could also determine the fate of the sixty-year-old institution. From 2012, French expatriates will elect their own representatives to the National Assembly, the lower chamber of the French parliament. Some AFE councillors admit that this could spell the end of the AFE.

AFE councillors already elect a number of senators. This poll is therefore a true political election, with a typically Gallic left-right divide. The Association démocratique des Français de l'étranger (ADFE) and the Union des Français de l'étranger (UFE) nominate candidates, who then form parliamentary parties. The ADFE broadly represents socialist and green voters, while the UFE, which has historically held a majority in the assembly, is closer to the conservative UMP party.

While a true political exercise, the AFE election is subject to a bizarre ban on electoral campaigning. French foreign residents will never be handed a UFE leaflet in an expat-oriented restaurant, nor will they come across an ADFE electoral poster at their local Alliance Française, a network of French international schools. Some candidates even refused to be named in this article for fear their election may be invalidated.

Between elections, both organisations organise mutual help among French communities across the world – regardless of the political orientation of the people who come to them, they assure.

155 councillors representing 2.1 millions expats The AFE represents the 2.1 million registered French citizens living abroad. Half of the AFE's 155 seats are up for election every three years. In 2009, councillors based in the Americas and Africa face their voters. This year’s poll is the first ever French political election in which Internet voting is allowed. In the 2012 legislative election, French expats will also have an opportunity to elect members of the parliament directly. According to an AFE councillor who pushed for the reform, nine seats have been earmarked to represent expats in the National Assembly.

“We are community elected officials”, says Michelle Mwenetombwe (photo), one of the incumbents in the constituency of the Congos and Angola, sitting at a table in the French cultural centre's friendly open-air cafeteria in Kinshasa. “We work on all the issues that affect the life of the French abroad: schooling, welfare, security."

The 61-year-old native from Guadeloupe has been married to a Congolese man for 32 years and has three children. She has worked as an accountant in the French school in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo for 14 years.
 

AFE councillors sit on local, embassy-based committees targeted at key issues for expat families, such as student grants and social security.

They get around €1,000 per month for secretarial expenses, plus a handful of trips to the countries in their constituency and to Paris for the AFE's plenary sessions.

Two such week-long sessions take place every year. There, AFE councillors split into specialised committees and exert a certain influence over the ministry of foreign affairs.

“We obtained the creation of a 24-hour security monitoring office at the ministry,” said Michelle Mwenetombwe. Several councillors hailed other achievements such as the payment of frozen pensions owed to French citizens who had paid taxes all their lives in countries such as the Republic of Congo.

Such progress is usually achieved during the time councillors spend away from their day job. “When you run, you know what you are in for”, said an incumbent who travelled to two countries in one week in addition to her nation of residence as the date of the vote drew nearer. No electoral campaigning involved, of course, but friendly meetings with French voters are still allowed.