Posted on 04/12/2007 7:49:02 PM PDT by Cincinna
After a quarter-century of drift Nicolas Sarkozy offers the best hope of reform
NO FRENCH presidential election in 50 years has looked as unpredictable as this year's, the first round of which takes place on April 22nd. This is so even though the leader in every opinion poll so far has been Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the ruling centre-right UMP party. His support may be overestimated, just as that of the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen may be underestimated. The rise of the centrist François Bayrou, who at one point almost overtook the Socialist Ségolène Royal, has muddied the electoral arithmetic. And with only ten days to go, more than two in five voters are undecided.
This election matters. France is the euro zone's second-biggest member and home to ten of Europe's 50 biggest companies. But it is deeply troubled. It has the slowest-growing large economy in Europe, a state that soaks up half of GDP, the fastest-rising public debt in western Europe over the past ten years and, above all, entrenched high unemployment. Over the past 25 years French GDP per person has declined from seventh-highest in the world to 17th. The smouldering mood of the suburbs (banlieues), home to many jobless youths from ethnic minorities, blazed into riots in 2005 and lay behind new trouble that flared recently at a Paris railway station. The disenchantment of voters is reflected not only in opinion polls but also in their rejection of the European Union constitution in 2005. Tellingly, they have not re-elected an incumbent government for a quarter-century.
The most urgent cure for all these ills is to get the economy growing faster. That requires radical liberalisation of labour and product markets, more competition and less protection, lower taxes and cuts in public spending, plus a shake-up of the coddled public services. None of these things was seriously tackled in the past 26 years, under the presidencies of François Mitterrand, from the left, and Jacques Chirac, from the right. This was a time when other European countries, such as Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and the Nordics, transformed themselves for the better, and still largely retained their cherished social models and welfare systems. Here lies the biggest challenge for the next French president.
Worst, worse, bad How do the candidates measure up? Only three of the 12 are serious runners (see article). A fourth who may shape the outcome is Mr Le Pen, the veteran leader of the racist National Front, who shamed France by edging past the Socialist candidate into the run-off against Mr Chirac in 2002. Mr Le Pen's poll numbers are better now than they were at the equivalent stage then. It is vital for France and its image that Mr Le Pen be kept out of the second round this time.
Ms Royal would be an asset in the second round, turning it into a satisfyingly direct left-right contest. She has other attractions: the first woman to be a serious contender, the boldness to push past the elephants in her party to win the nomination, a willingness to break with Socialist taboos by praising Britain's Tony Blair and criticising the French state's imposition of a maximum 35-hour working week. Unfortunately her policies are woolly even by modern standards. And in economics, she stands squarely behind all the old left-wing shibboleths: state intervention, rigid labour protection and high taxes.
On the face of it, the centrist Mr Bayrou is more promising. His pledge to curb the public debt is more credible than Ms Royal's and even Mr Sarkozy's. But he has failed to promote a free-market agenda—he is distressingly fond of farm subsidies and state intervention. Nor is it clear how he would form a government: his centrist party is tiny, and his vague musings of drawing in like-minded leaders from left and right smack of the lowest common denominator.
Faute de mieux Which leaves Mr Sarkozy as the best of the bunch. Unlike the others, and despite his long service as a minister under Mr Chirac, he makes no bones of admitting that France needs radical change. He is an outsider, born to an aristocratic Hungarian émigré father; he openly admires America; he is enthusiastic about the economic renaissance of Britain. He plans an early legislative blitz to take on hitherto untouchable issues such as labour-market liberalisation, cutting corporate and income taxes and trimming public-sector pensions.
But there are two doubts about Mr Sarkozy. As he showed in his brief stint as finance minister, he has most of the traditional French politician's meddlesome economic instincts, favouring a strong industrial policy, protected national champions and even interfering in supermarket prices. Recently he has taken to heaping blame on the European Central Bank for France's self-inflicted failings.
Such economic populism may merely be a ploy to win over an electorate that has long been averse to the market. But in Mr Sarkozy it is yoked to a second unattractive streak: a form of nativism, reflected in his harsh comments about immigrants and national identity. His supporters say he must tack right to lure voters from Mr Le Pen. But he is now so unpopular in the banlieues that—unlike Mr Le Pen—he has barely set foot in them during the campaign. As interior minister, he took great interest in how to improve the lives of French Muslims, but he has dropped all such talk as a candidate.
This may also explain the biggest defect in Mr Sarkozy's foreign policy: his fierce hostility to letting Turkey join the EU. Ms Royal has bravely supported the principle of Turkish membership. But this is unlikely to be put to the test for at least a decade, and on other EU issues, such as the future of the constitution, Mr Sarkozy has a more sensible, pragmatic approach than either of his main rivals. He is also the most likely candidate to repair France's tattered relations with America.
On the evidence of his career and his campaign, Mr Sarkozy is less a principled liberal than a brutal pragmatist. Yet he is the only candidate brave enough to advocate the “rupture” with its past that France needs after so many gloomy years. It has been said that France advances by revolution from time to time but seldom, if ever, manages to reform. Mr Sarkozy offers at least a chance of proving this aphorism wrong.
Chirac (UMP) at present has an overwhelming majority in the Assemble Nationale.
GROUPE DE L’UNION POUR UN MOUVEMENT POPULAIRE (350 membres, 9 apparentés).
GROUPE SOCIALISTE (141 membres, 8 apparentés).
GROUPE UNION POUR LA DÉMOCRATIE FRANÇAISE (26 membres, 3 apparentés).
GROUPE DES DÉPUTÉ-E-S COMMUNISTES ET RÉPUBLICAINS (21 membres, 0 apparentés).
DÉPUTÉS N’APPARTENANT À AUCUN GROUPE (14).
I should think with those kinds of numbers the in party should be able to stand up to any opposition. Why give in to mobs and strikers?
Call out the national guard!! Nationalize the trains, planes and busses. Cabbies, too. Accrocher les butées , a la le Reagan. (Sarkozy likes GW. GW likes Reagan.)
le yitbos
Thanks. The French need a good wallop of anti-immigrant if they intend to survive.
I just saw a report in CNN International where some French analysts said that voter registration among immigrants was dramatically up, and that many of them intends to vote for Le Pen.
The reason?
They want to destroy the current system.
That’s not really the reason. That’s the putative reason.
The REASON so many people secretly vote for Le Pen is because they AGREE with him. They agree that Frenchness - the culture, the language, and the racial majority - is well worth preserving. This is especially true with older, rural voters. There are also more than a few “French of color” who are native-born blacks, and some Beurs too, who furtively flirt with Le Pen because they don’t like the immigration pressures on their jobs. But all of those things were overwhelmed by the accusations that he’s an anti-Semite (most people don’t REALLY care, but aren’t going to SAY that in a poll), a crypto-fascist, etc., etc. And so Le Pen always gets many more votes in elections than in the polls.
But this time the game is different. The riots last year. The silent tensions. This has all people worried. But then came the Gare du Nord - a crystallizing moment. There was no police abuse here. Nor was there any religious content, or oppression, nothing. A fare-jumper was stopped, and gangs went wild, destroyed property, attacked the authorities. That is the state of affairs: lawlessness creeping up unchecked, and brazenly assaulting the authorities unprovoked. It was a snapping point.
This death of the policemen earlier in the week takes the issue further. Crime has become the issue. To speak of it openly, directly, is to talk in a new language, usually the province of the right that people don’t like.
But the VOTING. That will be different. The two toughest law and order candidates are Sarkozy and Le Pen. I expect Sarkozy to come out on top, but I expect Le Pen to surge and do far, far better than the polls predict. The Gare du Nord changed my mind and opened my eyes, and I’m currently living in Connecticut and getting my reports from family in Paris. For folks there, deciding now, it is even a bigger issue.
The polls are right about the big undecided vote, except that significant percentages of the “undecided” have actually decided to vote for Le Pen but won’t admit it to a pollster. I will be completely unsurprised if the Socialist Royal and the too-gentle Bayrou underpoll on election day, and Le Pen surges past them to become the run-off candidate.
I will also be unsurprised if this time, unlike last time, the knee-jerk “We MUST stop Le Pen!” mechanism will not be in play anymore. Because Le Pen has been consistently warning for the past 20 years about the very things happening in the wide open today. If he’s in the runoff, this time, with the crime so much worse and banditry - ETHNIC banditry - so much more out of control, many people will start to see a misjudged Churchillian figure in him. Sarkozy will still win, but he will not bury Le Pen as Chirac did.
Basically, Le Pen is right, but he’s the Archie Bunker of French politics. Nobody will admit he supports Le Pen. But Le Pen does well in the elections themselves. He very well could be in the runoff. Sarkozy is a lot more like Le Pen than Chirac does, in the sense that Sarkozy is willing to break heads and call people scum.
I am not so foolish as to PREDICT a Le Pen/Sarkozy runoff, but I will be completely unsurprised if it happens. Le Pen and Sarkozy are right, and the French are not stupid. Events are driving them to embrace law and order. It is time. It is past time.
FRENCH ELECTION UPDATE :: Thousands sign petition against “misogynous” treatment of Royal
dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur | Apr 12, 2007 | staff
Posted on 04/13/2007 3:40:50 AM EDT by Cincinna
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1816631/posts
The next time the french go to the barricades no one is likely to notice.
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/
The death of the policeman at the theme park in Paris is a reminder of the many acts of violence committed against those entrusted with the protection of French citizens. A long article in Le Monde, here abridged, gives a summary of some recent attacks:
The contrast is striking. In September 2006, a series of violent attacks committed against policemen provoked angry reactions from the police unions and a heated political debate, all covered by the media. Since then the attacks have hardly diminished but the coverage is much more low-key than in 2006.
According to INVU (National Indicator of Urban Violence) there have been 1400 attacks on security, emergency and health services during the first trimester of 2007. The last few weeks, in particular, have been marked by spectacular assaults, sometimes premeditated, against the police.
On March 20 the police fell into a trap in a housing project in Etampes (Essonne). In an act of vengeance because of an arrest made two days earlier, a group of young people organized an automobile chase with a stolen car, then set the car on fire to attract the firemen and police. When they arrived, they were the target of 20 to 30 shots fired with a 22 carabine rifle equipped with a sight. The sight, fortunately, was not properly adjusted and one person was wounded in the leg.
In Cergy (Val-d'Oise), on Sunday April 1, policemen were attacked by a group of 30 to 50 young people who doused them with fire extinguishers and threw stones. To break them up, the police twice used their firearms, aiming above their heads. A young man in a near-by park was wounded, possibly by a bullet that ricocheted.
Serious violence was also committed on April 4 in a housing project of Bassens (Gironde), near Bordeaux. After an identity check, 9 officers were wounded, one seriously, by stones and bottles thrown by about 15 young people. Sixty police officers were mobilized to restore order.
These events are not exceptional. They confirm a marked tendency, observed by both Right and Left. Violence against persons representing authority (gendarmes, police, firemen, health workers, teachers) has more than doubled since 1996.
In 2006, 24,851 crimes against authority figures were recorded, or 6.3% more than in 2005. The first half of 2006 was particularly difficult due to the after effects of the anti-CPE demonstrations. (...)
According to INVU 5,660 collective acts of urban violence against security personnel were recorded in 2006, as well as 8,500 projectiles thrown. Seine-Saint-Denis, Yvelines, le Nord, and les Bouches-du-Rhône are the departments most affected.
The extremely violent nature of the attacks is what is without precedent. Incendiary devices, man-hole lids, iron bars, blocks of cement, bowling balls: everything can be recycled into a weapon against the police. One arrest or an identity check gone wrong, can become a pretext, as at the Gare du Nord, in Paris, on March 27.
These attacks provoked a momentary eruption of the debate on crime in the presidential campaign. And yet, the other acts of violence that occur almost every day in the ghettoes no longer make news. How do we explain this shift? Are the unions, one of the major sources for journalists, unwilling to talk? Are the media reluctant to discuss this topic as the first round approaches?
"There is a general discouragement, even among the police. People get used to everything, and especially to violence, when it becomes a daily event, " explains Dominique Achispon, general secretary of the SNOP (National Union of Police Officers). "But beware: one day, if the pot boils over, the police will take to the streets to vent their frustration."
Jean-Claude Delage, general secretary of Alliance, denounces the "trivialization of violence against the police. "The police are considered to be agents of the Sarkozy Method, which means occupying the territory in all the bad neighborhoods. So, in a way, they are seen as getting what they deserve."
Other union leaders blame the changing moods of the media. "Today, it is fashionable to be anti-cop. The discussions following the Gare du Nord incident were caricatures. And besides, in the papers there is a reluctance to talk for fear of being accused of acting like the extreme-right," said Bruno Besichezza, general secretary of Synergie-officiers.
But the trauma of April 21, 2002, where Jean-Marie Le Pen beat Lionel Jospin in the first round of the presidential election is not just a concern of journalists. "We are very uncomfortable reporting these incidents. As an independent union, we always react when our colleagues are attacked. But we too remember the 2002 campaign, in which security became an issue: we don't want to make too much of it," admits Yves Louis, regional secretary of Alliance for Ile-de-France. The police fear the reactions of some of these young people in the projects in the event of a Sarkozy victory. "Things will explode if he wins. All those who want to get even with Sarkozy will take it out on his cops," he warns. (...)
The article makes some startling admissions regarding the media. First, if they tell the truth about urban violence, they automatically give credibility to the extreme-right, i.e. Le Pen. (It's tantamount to saying that Le Pen is right, but they can't say he's right, so they just don't report the crimes!)
Second, the ghettoes regard Sarkozy as their enemy merely because he sends cops to guard the neighborhoods. Sarkozy has been notoriously easy on criminals, and has subjected his own police to serious dangers. This has been discussed in many articles since the November 2005 riots. And yet, the media, like the ghettoes, regard him as some kind of enforcer.
Finally, the police are afraid of a Sarkozy victory because of the dangers they will have to face. Tantamount to saying that they don't trust Sarko to defend them when the explosions occur after May 6.
If there is a face-off between Sarko and Le Pen on May 6, there may be violence no matter who wins, since both are perceived as enemies of the "young people".
“If there is a face-off between Sarko and Le Pen on May 6, there may be violence no matter who wins, since both are perceived as enemies of the “young people”.”
Yes, but if there is, then Le Pen will respond to the violence with a firm and unrelenting hand, and so will Sarkozy. Flush it out and face it. It’s time.
It is worth noting that the murder of the Policeman in Paris has gone largely unreported in the mainstream French Press. Ostriches always, the French have got to face this problem head on, not hide their heads in the sand.
The dire predictions of violence after the election if Sarko wins just highlight the problem. Lawlessness and uncontrolled,unpunished crime have become a way of life in many of the “bainlieu” or suburbs in France.(Don’t think for a moment, Scarsdale or Larchmont). Housing projects were built outside of the large cities to house, or more accurately, warehouse the poor, and separate them from French society. This nightmare created by the Socialists under Mitterand, is a ring of bombs around cities like Paris and Lyon, just waiting to explode.
If the next President is not fully capable of doing what is necessary to protect the hardworking decent French citizens from this rampage, there will be hell to pay.
Now if that don't sound like Johny Sutton has got a side job in France, then ...?
I first arrived in Paris by train, and I remember seeing how depressing those monstrosities were in the banlieu. Just massive blocks of concrete. Not the Paris I’d pictured or would soon see. Saw a lot of those in Romania, later, but they weren’t the same. There you had a sense of things improving. Not at all what I saw in Paris.
I was there to visit my American Jewish friend, who was both spit upon and harrassed (on several occasions) for wearing her Star of David. They’d never do it when I was around, either. Cowards.
France needs a Napolean, and soon. Until they quash or amend what’s going on in the suburbs, your ring of bombs allusion holds true.
Precisely why Sarkozy is going to win.
The Gare du Nord event was like an alarm bell in the night for its CLARITY, at the moment in the campaign that it came.
It is precisely this unspoken anxiety about crime, and the realization that law and order are literally breaking down, that makes me believe Le Pen will be in the run-off.
But what do I know? Someone on another thread has decided I am a communist, socialist, Frenchie, Eurotrash, cowardly, foolish traitorous idiot. Given that, perhaps I should hang my head in shame and jump out the window.
My memories of arriving in Paris in 1984 as a student were the same. I arrived at CdeG Airport, and took a cab into town. I couldn’t believe the desolation and ugliness of the tall masses of concrete, a real blight.
Entering Paris, I found more beauty and charm than ever imagined. Paris is the most beautiful city in the world.
Even then, the people I lived with talked about the suburbs being a ring of explosives surrounding Paris ready to explode.
Don’t you dare do that!
We would miss your opinions, you contribute a lot to the discussion.
If you are eligible to vote, just do it.
The Flics had better shape up as well. If they have a strong leader behind them, and support from the Chirac government, they can hope for the beginning of the end of this reign of terror.
If not, they can always dust off the White Flags.
It’s true.
I’ve got a sister-in-law in Bondy, and two brothers-in-law in Neuilly (sur Marne, not Seine).
I have a cousine somewhere out towards Marne la Vallee. I always screw up the name because I’ve got “Esselles sur Seine” and “Beurs sur Yvette” etched into my memory.
These are some hard-ridden areas.
If I were elected President, I would...slash the military budget and spend it all doubling the police force. We need more police. A lot more police. And they need to be in the banlieux. I am not a fan of Affirmative Action, but I would actually increase government employment quite a bit. My theory is that we have to pay the subsidies anyway, and we’re better off paying it as salary than as allocations. Why? Because idle hands are the Devil’s worship. An Irish person said that too me once, and it stuck with me, because it is just plain true.
But I’m not running, so it’s Le Pen or Sarkozy.
If I am able to vote, I will vote for one of those two, and not Bayrou. Bayrou’s right philosophically, but what France needs is law and order.
In chats with M.Vicomte, I learned there was a conscious effort by authorities in France to ensure no leaders would arise to direct these rebellions.
Other sources affirmed, yes, it would be unwise for an individual to stick his neck out and take a 'leadership' position. Too many bad things would happen to him.
So we will see if Campfire of the Saints was prophetic?
(I did find it chilling that the Pope in that novel was Benedict XVI)
And Vicomte13, don't jump, the world would be a poorer place without ya!
Why couldn't I have sat next to smart guys like you when I was in school?
A wonderful piece- I lived in Paris- You are correct in your views
A wonderful piece- I lived in Paris- You are correct in your views
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