Waiting for Chirac

Surreal describes the state of France after more than a million students,  state workers and others vented their wrath against the Government's job plan and its supposed attempts to dismantle the welfare state. The unions made their point but failed to achieve major disruption to transport and the private sector largely ignored their call to stop work. 

So life goes on as normal. The tone for today's episode in the anti-reform jihad was set by the France Inter breakfast news, which gave time to Olivier Besancenot, a young Trotskyite star and presidential candidate. Besancenot, a messianic orator like Dominique de Villepin, the Prime Minister, called the people to arms in Spanish with a quote from le Che as France fondly calls the late Dr Guevara: "Hasta la Victoria, Siempre!", boomed Besancenot as France consumed its croissants. Nowhere to be heard in France this morning was Jacques Chirac, the man most responsible for landing the country in its present mess.

Like Guevara, the chief executive and head of state has taken to preaching the evils of international capitalism -- more dangerous than Soviet communism, he said last year. This helps explain why so few understand Dominique de Villepin's  capitalist reforms and also why Chirac has failed so far to tell France directly what he thinks of  his Prime Minister's youth job scheme or how he intends to calm the furore caused by his crusade.

So far, the president has only called vaguely for "dialogue". Chirac has remained holed up in the Elysée Palace while the country has been hearing a lot from Charles de Gaulle, a previous incumbent there, thanks to a television drama on the national hero.

A demoralised de Gaulle briefly ran off to Germany in the midst of the big student mutiny in 1968 and never recovered politically from the upheaval. Chirac will, we are told, address the nation within days on the glum revolt of 2006. 

He has held off partly because of the hybrid role that was created for de Gaulle: the president is supposed to keep a distance as father of the nation at the same time as he is a politician who was elected to govern. But the main reason for Chirac's absence is that he has little idea what to say.

The president must quell the unrest and save the last of what will be 12 dismal years in office but his options are minimal. If he backs de Villepin's intransigence over his employment law, he will prolong the revolt and help ensure a Socialist victory in next year's elections. If he fails to support de Villepin, his appointed Prime Minister is likely to walk out, leaving a field of ruins until the elections next spring. The chief beneficiary in Chirac's own camp would of course be Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister and would-be president, who is in open rebellion against de Villepin. Sarkozy is graciously telling people now that he will not leave the Government "because you don't abandon a listing ship".

Everyone is now waiting for the Constitutional Council to rule on the legality of the jobs reform by the end of this week. An order from the council to send the law back to Parliament would take the heat off de Villepin and his boss, but the Prime Minister's people themselves do not believe that this will happen.

Meanwhile, the Government is condemned to carry on explaining a law that has been misunderstood at home and abroad.  Like last year's immigrant riots, the Government has been stung by the foreign media depiction of Paris as the new Baghdad.  Once again, Philippe Douste-Blazy, the Foreign Minister, called foreign correspondents into one of his elegant breakfasts today to set the record straight. There was nothing new in his gloss, but he achieved one thing: an apology from Chris Burns, a CNN reporter, for the American news network's comparison between Paris and the 1989 uprising in Beijing. Kyra Phillips, a CNN commentator, infuriated the French on Tuesday by saying the scene of protesters fighting police was like the Tiananmen militants facing the tanks on the square where they were later massacred.

Such images are absurd but inevitable given the way that television pictures so hugely magnify unrest. They are also encouraged by the tone of the language used on all sides in France's bother over its labour law. Apart from the rhetoric of  Trotskyites and the street revolutionaries, de Villepin loves wielding the martial images of his hero Napoleon Bonaparte and the parliamentary Socialists have been only too happy to dust off their sixties slogans of people power.   As Martine Aubry, 55, former Socialist Employment Minister, said today: "A country cannot be allowed to head for disaster because one man digs his heels in alone against all."   In other words,  as Che put it, El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!     

 

Comments

[Frank Schnittger]

When history is repeated it tends to return as a tragedy. When it is repeated again and again it becomes a farce. The student rebellion of 1968 was a delayed response to a society and culture ossified by war and its consequences. It came at a time of rising prosperity when the restrictions on art, behaviour and morals were no longer required to maintain a disciplined and puritanical hierarchical societal fabric and work ethic.

The current demonstrations have brought that cycle a full circle - only now we are coming from the opposite direction. All the freedoms achieved in 1968 are at risk because the pendulum swung too far and put at risk the economic prosperity which could sustain them.

The problem with a full revolution is that you tend to end up where you started from. Half revolutions are best because then those who were at the bottom are at the top and vice versa. The problem is no one shouted stop. Chirac was never more than a callow opportunist who substituted chauvinism for vision.

If France does not find a new vision it could drag the entire EU project down with it and Europe will become but a minor player dominated by the US and the Far eastern powers.

[all]

... Mais ce n'est pas une révolution, juste un monôme étudiant. Et pour les syndicats une action politique pour appuyer la gauche.
Je pense que les émeutes de banlieue étaient un problème autrement plus sérieux, et non-résolu à ce jour.
Cordialement

[Hugues]

You have to admit we're an interesting lot to write about : for ever on the brink of revolution. You could have been sent to Switzerland or worse...

[john gregory Flinn]

What intrigued me about the tv pictures of Tuesday's demo in Paris was so many cameras being used. I mostly saw SLRs, but some phone cameras as well. Almost every flurry at 'Les Barricades' was photographed by dozens of people.
Were these journalists, students, lawyers(chasing claims), police or what?

However perhaps the students should reflect on where the cameras were produced. Probably in Japan, Korea and China, very few from France or Europe.
This epitomises a problem of employment in the West. Fewer and fewer graduates want careers in making things, with the result that manufacturing industry in Europe is dwindling, or being exported. So there are fewer jobs for the young from the 'banlieue' and elsewhere.
Advancing science and technology inevitably leads to high-tech products and real wealth. Becoming a journalist or a lawyer may be a logical career choice where governments and parliaments are so obsessed with legislating about everthing under the sun. But it does not creat wealth. Also, there is a potentially dangerous feedback operating here - more lawyers want more laws and more legislation, and so on.
Perhaps we should teach all these lawyers and journalists oriental languages as well, then we can export them -(sorry, I mean their services)!

[Robert Marchenoir]

"Were these [people with cameras in the demonstration] journalists, students, lawyers (chasing claims), police or what?"

Why, they were bloggers, obviously.

And if you don't like this conjecture of mine, if you are ready to hear a really, really sick, conspirationist idea, I'm willing to provide my own contribution to all these revolutionary-minded do-gooders lurking on French blogs.

These suspiciously numerous camera-toting characters were, obviously, paid agents of Sarkozy's secret police. Yessir.

Their mission was not to document police files with political opponents. Naaah.

But how do you account for the fact that so many people join a demonstration with expensive cameras and mobile phones in full view, knowing damn well that, by so doing, they will attract scores of hooded banlieue youths who will beat them to a pulp in order to loot their gadgets?

Well, the only explanation is that the aim of the game is precisely to provoke the "racaille", and induce them to violent muggings in front of TV cameras.

Insuring, therefore, a backlash at election time in favour of the law and order candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy.

There you are.

How do you like that?

That's a piece of political analysis for you, Charles!

I just hope that nobody picks it up from here and spreads it through the blogosphere.

[Clementine]

Robert Marchenoir: too late ;)

[Frank Schnittger]

Aha! So the demonstrators are really campaigning for a Sarkozy presidency!

I have seen the light and shall lurk no more. But pray, please explain why they should want a Sarkozy presidency?

[john chappell]

A riposte to Selwyn -

"Zealous government officials, radical labor unions and a deeply nationalistic mindset are holding back integration with the rest of the world." - Quote / Unquote -
Could this quotation come from a modern day critique of France -
Well it could. But it does'nt.
Actually the commentary was written about another 'model of development'
This was written - and taken from the author of a recent book on what could be called and is rightly classed as 20th Century economic/ socio/ historical miracles * I'm making reference to one of the Asian miracle countries - it was used to describe the so-called 'Hermit spirit' that exists in modern day Korea.
A commentary was recently made on the book that tries to uncover what is happening on thet peninsula :!
But then in the hexagon that is France, there is case to uncover the same story.
My point to Selwyn - is that Colbert has long gone, but I'm not so assured that the concepts, the thinking are as bleak as one would depict.
Today there is a a characterial quality to the french business spirit - it exists and could be 'hermit' or it could be 'Hermit but with those we know' - taking my definition then on the bell curve of 'economic patriotism' - these would be the outliers - the extremes of what is happening (hence Mittal v Arcelor, Boeing v Airbus etc )-
Let's not forget there is french orientated partnership, cooperation etc -
But reading some of the other blogs (I am thinking of Victor - a couple of days back 'the preserve of competition and deregulation are not the vocabulary of France etc... How can I let that pass when there IS a level of partnership, there is an outwardness - BUT - in European terms. (ie.French definition or perspective). Perhaps, that is what the French elite, aka, Chirac and company broadly believe in. Holistic europe, with a French-Euro core, etc. Hence no room or accomodation for an 'entity' like Mittal.

Another aside, on French corporate reluctance to go transfering intellectual property from Areva to tie up deals in China etc. Case in point.
As with any story there are exceptions.
Alstom sold the TGV - technology in winning the Seoul - Busan TGV link. What happened here. Are they happy? I don't know - but in the world of 'Hermit Kingdom' industrial intellectual technology will be prized and I would concede straight off that the values inherent in Colbert will not vanish.
Before I get a reminder that French -Western Business is also on the 'prowl' and Intellectual Property is guarded, competition is still the name of the game in all 'economic' war zones. Of course.

[Simon]

Mr Besancenot's comments are not to be taken as the main ideas of people who strike in France! We never compare ourselves to some Che guevara actions! We fight for our rights not for a revolution. This is not May 68! This law is going to erase some rights we have had since 1887...