|
Socialist Frenchwoman Takes Hard Stance on Violence
 PARIS (AP) - Military training for unruly French teenagers. Boot camp for their parents. A heavy hand and zero tolerance. The latest rhetoric from the far right? No, these ideas are coming from the top Socialist contender for next year's presidential race.
| Cats and dogs living together in sin ... |
Segolene Royal's hard-line response to renewed violence in troubled districts this week sounds suspiciously similar to that of her chief rival on the right, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. The battle is on between the two dynamic figures, and Royal's latest salvo attests that security will loom large in the campaign. It caught Sarkozy off guard - but also worried many of Royal's fellow leftists, uneasy about her soaring popularity and her departures from the Socialist Party line. The party has yet to choose its candidate for 2007, and many are jockeying for the spot.
"We need a return to the heavy hand," Royal, 52, said Wednesday night on a visit to Bondy, a suburb east of Paris hit by rioting that swept impoverished French neighborhoods for weeks last fall.
| The heavy hand of the state in the statist way. |
Critics say the government has failed to solve the problems the riots exposed: racism against immigrants, soaring unemployment among unskilled youth, and deep-seated alienation in the depressed housing projects that ring French cities. Royal, who became the darling of the polls largely without staking out any policy positions, called the government's handling of the suburbs' woes since the riots "an absolute failure."
Posted by: Steve White 2006-06-02 |
