France: Politics: Nicolas Sarkozy takes on Socialists, and also Lackadaisicals of his own party
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In many leading reports from France these days, it seems the bookreview genre predominates. Such is the case with Adam Sage's bookreviewish account in The Times "The French Interior Minister has a stark message for his countrymen" (Jul 18,2k6). The book under review, Testimony (English trans), is written by an important French govt figure who, from his positions as head of the main govt party UMP and as Minister of the Interior who thereby also heads France's national police as in the widespread ethnic youth riots of several months back. Now Sarkozy has taken on the current President of France, Jacques Chirac, hoping to be his successor in that office, while from the same political party, UMP. [Note: "M" in these across-the-channel dispatches = the French "Monsieur" -- or "Mr.", of course.]
Témoignage (Testimony) has an initial print run of 130,000 copies and M Sarkozy’s publisher, XO Editions, hopes that the work will become a summer blockbuster.Europe > France:
M Sarkozy hopes that it will be a launch pad to the presidency next year.
In it, the leading centre-right contender aims to demonstrate that he is everything President Chirac is not — honest, pragmatic, straight-talking and pro-Anglo-Saxon. He is open about the difficulties that he says France is facing after M Chirac’s 11 years in power, and about his own problems.
Spring 2007 Prez Election
Four pages are devoted to his separation and reconciliation with his high-profile wife, Cécilia. “Too much pressure, too many attacks, not enough attention from me. At the time, the couple we formed together did not resist.”Two days later, Katrin Bennhold's report was headlined, "In France, an intriguing a story of love, politics and rivalry," International Herald Tribune (July 20, 2006). Three further days later, the latter reporter gets a second round with a more harshly political headline, "Nicolas Sarkozy, in a book, lets fly at his party leaders" Katrin Bennhold, IHT (July 23, 2006).
Adam Sage had already said it all on Jul 18:
... [T]he personal confessions that run through Témoignage accompany a tough political message on the cardinal value of work, a value that he says the French have abandoned in favour of such measures as the 35-hour working week.Interestingly, in this tangle of the personal and the political, the leading contender for the Socialist Party candidacy for President of France is a woman. married, and apparently with no soap-opera episode to 'fess up. Andrew Hussey, writing in another UK newspaper,The Observer (Jul23,2k6), "Is France ready for a woman President?" --
Hailing modern Britain as an example, M Sarkozy urges voters to remove their heads from the sand, accept that France is in decline and embrace the market economy as the path to revival.
His argument represents an electoral gamble in a country that has repeatedly voted in favour of generous welfare payments and extensive leisure time — and which will be invited by the Socialist Party to do the same again in the presidential election next spring.
“I believe that deep in French society there is a strong demand for the restoration of certain values of the Republican right: work, respect for authority, the family, individual responsibility,” he says. Although he denies personal animosity for his rival, President Chirac, he makes no attempt to hide their fundamental political differences.
He criticises almost every significant decision that M Chirac has taken, including the threat to veto a UN resolution on the war in Iraq and approval of Turkey’s entry into the EU.
It has been a remarkable year for Marie-Segolene Royal. Emerging from the shadow of her husband, and a low-key career in politics, she is now tipped to become France's first-ever female President. Women admire her for taking on the macho world of French politics, while men are wooed by her mix of intelligence and sexiness. But is this tough-minded reformer really a revolutionary force-in-waiting?In the same Sunday edition, Mary Riddell, headed "Suddenly, we all want to speak in tongues" (Jul23,2k6) makes the reverse observation for the Brits of what Sage reports regarding Sarkozy's challenge to the French on language. Riddell:
Football managers, comedians ... the famously monoglot British are rushing to learn languages [foremost being French, interestingly - P]Sage:
...'[I]n a comment that will infuriate traditionalists, he says that the French should no longer insist on speaking their own language in international negotiations and instead should use English.Sarkozy led the way in declaiming against the ethnic-youth rioters, then supported the new law for small businesses, allowing them to hire and fire more easily -- so that ethnic youth without job experience could get a toehold in the workforce, denial of which has been said to be an important factor in the ethnic riots. Whereas, the French govt then faced a later set of riotous strikes from featherbedding unionized non-ethnic workers and students. Sarkozy was prominent in negotiating all these rapids, and his book is a diagnosis at a deeper level of the problem epitomized by the two sets of riots.
“We should ask ourselves why the English buy our houses in the Dordogne, in the Périgord ... and in many other regions. The answer is simply because the British GDP is 10 per cent greater than the French and that the standard of life of the British is higher than that of the French.”
“We have committed the immense error of undermining work. When someone who works does not have a better life than someone who does not work, why should he get up in the morning?”
More currently, Sarkozy is trying to limit illegal immigration, France having the h+est level of legal migration already.
At present, it is not known whether Jacques Chirac (an old man) will run again; and if he does not, then his lieutenant of long standing, M Dominique de Villepin, now Prime Minister (when Foreign Minister, he merited Donald Rumsfeld characterization of France and Germany at the time, "Old Europe"), this de Villepin may attempt to inherit the chiracquist machine in the UMP party. Yet, in both cases of Old France, Sarkozy (in his early 50s, young for a French Prez) may be able to cut thru the malaise and failures of Chirac's leadership of France, unable to divest itself of dreams of lost empires and unable to awaken to Europe's new demographic challenges and France's lack of competitiveness.
In the title URL for this blog-entry, Sarkozy had a 3% lead in French opinion polls on who should be next president.
-- Politicarp
Further Resources:
refWrite (Apr3,2k6) on UMP's Statement of Principles
refWrite (Apr5,2k6) on radical unionism against govt job measures favouring ethnic-minority youth 1st-time employment
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