I have had ample occasions, in these columns, to define the period we are living as a transitory step of systemic changes. The turmoil political elites are encountering in almost every democratic country is the natural emanation of the versatility of these developments.

The absence of conventional political references most of the time push the analyst into the error. The recent start of a presidential campaign in France has allowed me to write two articles about the possible outcome of the forthcoming elections, giving a large and clear victory perspective to the candidate of Les Républicains, the French conservative party who picked as their champion François Fillon, the former premier.

I wrote, in an article published at the end of November in Daily Sabah, the following about him: "Fillon is the exact opposite of Nicolas Sarkozy, under whom he served as a low-profile premier for five years. He is very polite and not exuberant in his political or personal life. His wife, Penelope Clark Fillon, is a socially invisible Welsh-turned-French lawyer, they met during their law studies at university and got married. Their children are also perfectly anonymous citizens. These are the antidotes to Nicolas Sarkozy, his marriages, his whiz kids and his 'bling bling' lifestyle."

Well, that was said too hastily apparently and without taking into consideration the existence of a very peculiar newspaper, le Canard Enchaîné (the chained Duck). The said journal has disclosed a very disturbing detail concerning Fillon, who apparently has paid his wife a salary from public funds as an "assistant" to a deputy. Obviously, his wife did not really participate in Fillon's activities as a deputy directly, so there is a very big question mark regarding the veracity of this job.

Since the disclosure of this detail, Fillon has made one stumble after another. First he declared that his wife was really supporting him professionally, therefore her job was not fictitious at all. Legally, it would be indeed very difficult to demonstrate that the salary was perceived unduly. But the damage in the public opinion was done. To envenom the situation further, Fillon said that he also paid two of his children while he was a senator for professional projects because of their merit as lawyers.

It became apparent that his lawyer offspring were only going to university when Fillon was a senator. Wham… His popularity ratings are in free fall. What was seen as an easy road to the presidency a few weeks ago has turned into a very, very complicated issue for the former premier.

On the other hand, Benoit Hamon, the former minister, quite handsomely won the Caucasus for the Socialist Party candidacy to the presidential elections. He represents the "left" wing of the old Socialist Party, advocating a "universal salary" for every citizen to live in dignity. He looks like Bernie Sanders or Tony Benn without the charisma. He will be severely challenged by the left, represented by Jean-Luc Mélenchon who has been able to bring together some of the electorate of the old Communist Party, which today is almost defunct. But more importantly, the real champion of the center-left, Emmanuel Macron, the former minister of Economy under François Hollande, can create a real surprise. He has refused to take part in the Socialist Caucasus, started his own campaign based on the center left and right, and since he has been ambling at the top of the polls. With the unpredicted fall of Fillon as a possible second round contender, Macron has a very tangible chance to get elected.

Now the one issue on which everyone tacitly agrees is the fact that the candidate of the extreme right, Marine le Pen, daughter to infamous Jean-Marie Le Pen, who evicted her father from the party leadership, will be present in the second round. Whoever will be against Le Pen in the second round of the presidential elections is poised to win handsomely, because France is not the United States, at least for now. So we might have a remake of the 2002 elections where, despite a good score in the first round, the left was not represented in the second round because there were too many candidates and the votes were divided. Jacques Chirac encountered Jean-Marie Le Pen and won with an incredible 82 percent of the votes.

We might also have a real surprise with Emmanuel Macron, perhaps if Fillon is unable to recuperate the support he lost in a matter of weeks. We might also see Alain Juppé as a last resort candidate replacing Fillon, in spite of the fact that Juppé has categorically rejected such a scenario.

In a nutshell, what characterizes this transitory period is the unpredictability of the voters, the rise of the radical far-right, the inability of the conventional parties to find a rhetoric that appeals to the masses while remaining responsible. One other common denominator to all the contests is the absence of the dependability of opinion polls, which missed badly on Brexit and Trump's victory. We will see in Turkey, in very likely the first week of April, regarding the Constitutional referendum, then in May in France whether the polls are still dependable.