Macron gets 51 votes from Teluguspeaking French citizens
Emmanuel Macron’s win in France’s landmark presidential election has spread cheer 7,876 km away in Indian town Yanam, home to a small community of Telugu-speaking French citizens who voted for him.
All the 51 citizens who have voting rights voted in favour of Macron from Yanam, a vibrant town situated about 30 km from Kakinada town in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.
Yanam’s French citizens acknowledged they played a marginal role in pro-European centrist Macron’s win over opponent Marine Le Pen, but that did not detract from their happiness.
“Macron had promised to enhance pension for overseas French nationals and renew their citizenship, besides payment of unemployment allowance to the youth and opening up employment opportunities for immigrants. On the other hand, Le Pen is like US President Donald Trump, who threatened to take away jobs of immigrants,” Yanam resident Sadanala Babu, a French national by birth, said.
Yanam, a picturesque enclave of Puducherry but geographically a part of Andhra Pradesh, has more than 100 families with French nationality. Along with other French colonies of Puducherry, Yanam became free through a referendum on November 1, 1954, and the transfer of power was done in August 1962. Many members of these families had worked for the French government in the past, retired and settled in different parts of France, but a few of their descendants stayed put in Yanam. These Yanam residents continue to vote in the French presidential elections every five years.
“In the first phase of elections held on April 23, some of us went to the polling booth set up at Puducherry by Consulate General of France. But in the second phase held on Sunday, most of us used the facility of procurement votes (proxy votes), authorising the consulate authorities to vote on our behalf. An official from the French consulate came in March and collected procurement votes from us,” Babu said. According to him, how Yanam residents voted is no big secret. “The voting is open and we all voted for Macron.”