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Le Pen gaining strength after riots
 The public mood in France has darkened and veered sharply to the Right in the two months since the Paris riots. Despite endless political hand-wringing over the failure of the French model of ethnic integration, the country is no closer to a national consensus about how to re-establish the core republican values of fraternity and equality.
| Life, liberty and pursuit of happiness need not apply. |
Indeed, the political centre of gravity has shifted in favour of Jean-Marie Le Pen, as Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin who is a man scramble to head off the lethal challenge from the far Right. Support for Le Pen's National Front - or at least its anti-immigrant ideology - has risen since the riots, sparking fears there will be a repeat of the 2002 presidential election, when the wily demagogue trounced the Left that's the good part and almost snatched the presidency.
I don't know that much about the guy, and whether his is really as scary as portrayed by the establishment, or is more like Pat Buchanon: someone with some good ideas, but many more bad ones.
| He's clever, smart and dangerous. |
According to a survey published in Le Monde newspaper this week, for 30per cent of French voters the National Front does not represent "a danger to democracy". This is despite Le Pen's crazed calls to "send home" restive French citizens from the suburbs, even if they are second- or third-generation migrants from former colonies such as Algeria or Morocco. One in four French are in favour of Le Pen's ideas, especially regarding defence of traditional values and immigration. And 63 per cent say there are "too many immigrants in France", a 4 per cent rise since 2003.
As the electorate turns increasingly inwards, heavy-handed solutions to the crisis of the French suburbs proliferate. The political elite is sending a strong message that France effectively blames its immigrants for the troubles, with renewed crackdowns on non-French residents, asylum-seekers or the "sans papiers" - illegal immigrants. The aristocratic Villepin who is a man wants to further entrench disadvantage by lowering the legal age at which troubled students in the suburbs can leave school, to 14.
Meanwhile, the nation is embroiled in a bruising culture war over its dubious colonial past. Commentators, historians and even rappers rightly point to the French state's refusal to face up to its history as one source of abiding anger in the disadvantaged suburbs, which surround the country's big towns from Paris to Toulouse.
Yet parliamentarians from the ruling Centre-Right party persist with plans to force schools to teach the "positive aspects of colonisation". At least "Monsieur 1 per cent" - the unpopular Chirac - says history should be left to the historians. And he claims he is in favour of the idea of a day of remembrance for the descendants of slaves.
| The immigrants from France's former sub-Saharan colonies, like Senegal and Ivory Coast, are the major problem. They would have a chance of integrating into France if given the opportunity. The Berbers, Algerians and Morroccans are the real issue; they're making it clear that they don't want to integrate. |
Against this backdrop, structural reform of the economy - possibly the best long-term source of hope for the unemployed youth of the suburbs - remains stalled. This week, France woke up to a report into its astronomical public debt, which is now higher than E2000 billion ($3210billion), or 200 per cent of GDP. "Our society state is bankrupt," wrote Pascal Gobry, of the French Institute of Actuaries, in Le Monde. "Even if it would sell to the Japanese the Palace of Versailles at a high price, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, all of our patrimony, the French state could not honour her commitments for retirees or salaries. The king is completely nude."
| This realization hasn't yet permeated to the point that the French will make the changes to their economy that are needed to get some growth going. The unions will still strike for silly reasons, the Communist and Socialist parties will prevent reforms to the pensions and retirement systems, and the old-boys club will keep foreign competition out. I think they're screwed. |
Posted by: Jackal 2005-12-18 |
