Election Ploy: Sarkozy Plans to Add Toussaint Louverture to the Pantheon · Global Voices
Jennifer Brea

Alain Mabanckou reposts an article by Haitian radio station Kiskeya discussing French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy's promise to add the names of Toussaint Louverture and Léopold Sédar Senghor to the Pantheon (Fr) in Paris, resting place of French luminaries like Volatire, Marie Curie and Napoleon, if elected.  The addition of Louverture, one of the fathers of the Haitian Revolution, struck many of Mabanckou's readers as especially bizarre–and disrespectful–election ploy.  It was against Napoleon's armies that Louverture waged his revolution for independence from France and on Napoleon's orders that he was captured and sent to the French prison where he later died.