The Leadership of France - Research Paper Example

Order 274836 Q. Do you think the leadership of France is conservative, liberal, libertarian, or neo-liberal? Why? Answer: The government of France is a semi-presidential system determined by the French Constitution of the fifth Republic, in which the nation declares itself to be "an indivisible, secular, democratic, and social Republic". Traditionally, presidents under the Fifth Republic have tended to leave day-to-day policy-making to the prime minister and government; the five-year term of office is expected to make presidents more accountable for the results of domestic policies. Sarkozy, however, has been a hands-on manager and policymaker.Therefore,let us critically analyze the current french political regime from the point of view of the extant neo-liberal bent propogated by President Sarkozy. To dwell on the nature of current French Nicolas Sarkozy (Sarko ), the 52 years old right wing driven, won comfortably the hotly contested French Presidential contest on 6 May, with a high 85% voter turn out by garnering 53% votes. Sarko represents UMP (Union pour un mouvement populaire). He is neo-liberal, authoritarian, pro-American and pro-Israeli. Except for Socialist Francois Mittereands 14 years reign, France has been ruled by right wing forces since 1958 when Charles de Gaulle ushered in the new Republican regime. Paving the way for the electoral victory of the 52-year old leader of the French Right were the simultaneous decomposition of the French Left and Sarkozy’s successful unification of the three streams of the Right — neoliberal, national and fascist. When Sarkozy became “Monsieur le President de la Republique,” the 23rd French chief of state, the sixth since the new Constitution of 1958 that initiated the Fifth Republic of France, his true intentions for promised new directions were still ambiguous. Was he a neo-Gaulist, one speculated, or truly a hostage of the extreme Right that swept him into office? Upon the election of Nicolas Sarkozy there was a strong current in the media — both in France and internationally — claiming that “things had changed”. Sarkozy, it was said, was the man who would cut back the “gluttonous” French state, “modernising” the economy by curbing the power of the unions and replacing the France of the 35-hour-week with a new more “flexible” culture that valued “hard work”. French workers had to prepare for Sarkozy’s onslaught. As we have seen with November’s rail strikes, university occupations and rioting in the suburbs, resistance to Sarkozy is deep-rooted. Some activists have used the catch-cry “Sarko-facho” (“Sarkozy-fascist”); portrayed him as nothing but a lickspittle of George Bush; or, as the Iranian media now have it, a Mossad agent. Yet most of the French President’s pronouncements seem to be in tune with the anti-working class, conservative and authoritarian political tradition of General de Gaulle. On the other hand, Sarkozy’s underlining of great national objectives means distancing France from the spirit of liberal free trade. The French Left accuses Sarkozy of being authoritarian and of unstable character. The Left’s electoral campaign early this year aimed at trying to rouse his ire and demonstrate his incapacity of leading la douce France. The crude reality is that while the French Left claims a monopoly on morality, the political Right dominates this largely conservative, extremely traditional nation. We only have to think back to spring 2006 when the previous UMP [Gaullist] government attempted to introduce the CPE law to undermine young workers’ job stability, or 2005 when it backed the EU Constitution. The continuity in the history of the French right is examined in some detail in the latest issue of the Ni Patrie ni Frontières journal*, which devotes some 62 pages to assessing the character of so-called “Sarkozyism”. Sarkozy has taken on great personal power, setting great store by his own image and casting himself as somewhat of a national saviour, in the mould of de Gaulle or a Napoleon. The assertion that Sarkozy represents an “Anglo-Saxon neo-liberal” current can also be misleading. True his anti-trade union and privatising agenda echoes Margaret Thatcher (hence the nickname “Monsieur Thatcher”, a characterisation which he does not seem particularly keen to dispel). Yet the claim that he is not a normal French bourgeois politician, but really just a lackey of George Bush, seems just to reflect the myth of a “republican collective” of “traditional” political debate, counterposed to “outsider” elements not native to French politics. Fear played an important role in the elections which Sarko exploited taking much of the elderly frightened vote with his get tough policy on immigration, crime and violence and attracted others by promised Anglo-Saxon style economic reforms. Segos warning of the violence in case of a Sarko win helped him instead, but viola violence erupted all over France the day after Sarkos Champagne flowing victory celebrations. With passions aroused in the wake of a brutal polarizing campaign, France and the world now await in the lull before the incoming storm, with Sarko gone away to unwind with his estranged wife in tow to sail the calm Mediterranean waters and think through his plans and politics. But his use of a rich mans super luxury yacht, after claiming to be the President of the poor half as well, was much criticized. But first to the Assembly elections next month to see which way the French camel will sit. The real battles will commence in autumn when the French return from their sacred vacations. US President George Bush, who won the 2004 poll, masterminded by Karl Rove, the master manipulator of fear of fear, could barely wait for the closing of the polls to congratulate Sarko and to welcome him to the neo-Liberal world, from which poodle British PM Tony Blair is making an involuntary exit by end June, mercifully; Angela Merke, who just about managed to become German Chancellor in a grand coalition and others. Europe would be the ground for the coming struggles between the Left and the Right, which the Left is winning in Latin America. A White House spokesman while admitting differences with the outgoing Chirac regime gloated that "there are certainly real opportunities to work together on a broad range of issues." The two Presidents will meet next month at a G8 summit in Germany. In his victory speech, Sarko proclaimed that: "France will always be by the USs side... You can count on our friendship." Through this he underscored his desire for warmer ties with Washington and was filled with effusive praise for American values. The Wall Street Journal welcomed Sarkos win as "the promise of closer trans-Atlantic links". Charles Kupchan, at the Council on Foreign Relations, stated that Sarko was more willing to work with the US "than any president since De Gaulle. But Jeremy Shapiro of the Washington think-tank the Brookings Institution pointed out that the French people were still highly wary of America. Governments around the world congratulated Sarkozy, even Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Turkish Prime Minister, who urged him to desist from making further statements against Turkeys entry into the European Union. In US occupied Iraq President Jalal Talabani, hoped for Frances greater co-operation in the struggle against terrorism. France led by its suave and articulate Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, along with German Foreign Minister Fischer had fiercely opposed US led illegal invasion of Iraq. An admirer of Blairs New Labour ideology, Sarko has promised to "communicate" more aka spin with the French people, and which they are wary of. But he must win a parliamentary majority next month first and sell the idea of change to push through his economic and other reforms like tax cuts, loosening the 35-hour week, limit strike action and reduce state bureaucracy. However, even the British visitors to France admit with envy that health and transport services are much superior in France. The state of medical coverage for poor Americans is deplorable. In USA, five media corporate conglomerate control and manufacture news for the masses. France is relatively freer even with government control. Would the French want to be like the Anglo-Saxons? For many around the world, Sarkozy as a president with two-faces. Nicolas Sarkozy has the lowest approval ratings since he took office a year ago: 53 percent of the French elected him as state president. Today only 39 percent of the French approve of his politics. History does not serve second helpings. It was a triumphant victor, in a France that was suddenly full of hope, who took the reins of power at the Elysée in May 2005. It is a Head of State who is much under discussion, not very well liked by his European alter egos and slated by the surveys conducted among his fellow citizens, who is taking over the presidency of the Union today. A strange fate for a man who thought he was able to bend everything to his will. It is the story of a great misunderstanding. A story that began like a fairly-tale ,with high-sounding rosy promises and faltering hope. Having crossed the desert and having suffered a great many political vicissitudes, the young Nicolas Sarkozy had played a winning strategy by taking hold of the majority party in order better to challenge the former party head Jacques Chirac, a president who was running out of steam. During the presidential campaign, from autumn 2006 to summer 2007, he was carried by the incredible passion for politics with which the French - who were said to be blasé and depressive - were gripped. Once again, suddenly, the French had belief, facing Ségolène Royal, François Bayrou, Nicolas Sarkozy, these new candidates who, each in his/her way, ensured that a little original music was heard. The French people chose Nicolas Sarkozy for political reasons, but not only for this reason. They permitted themselves to be conquered by a man who had contributed to having abstention reduced, stifling the Front national (National Front), and more particularly embodying an irrepressible need for change and mastery. While the French people were emerging from a long period of mistrust of those elected and skepticism with regard to their capacity for action, there arrived a man endowed with an unusual amount of energy, who promised them in a decisive tone to have the lines redrawn, all of the lines. This man swore that he would free French society. In addition, he would have taxpayers reach the zenith of purchasing power. The French people made quite a break. But not the one they thought. The downfall of Nicolas Sarkozy in the opinion polls, the worst of the Vth République, was the reverse of the astonishing expectation to which he had given rise. The electorate had wanted this man who was dynamic, courageous, modern, open, transparent, in short new in every sense of the term. They sometimes had the impression that they were in the presence of an excited, impatient, rough, autocratic, contradictory, manipulative and improvising adolescent, powerless in the face of a crisis and walked out by international financial risks and diplomatic disappointments. The French people had voted for a Statesman who was going to revive the country. They found themselves with a man with political thrust, obsessed with appearing so, via the media and through his own image. The President of the Republic was very lucky to be faced with a left that was much too divided and uncertain of its foundations to construct a discourse of solid, convincing opposition, without facile diabolisation. The disappointment of the French people is greatly misunderstood. In the favor of all political opinions, Nicolas Sarkozy is not what he claims. « I love France like a dear friend who has given me everything, he declared humbly on the evening of his election, on 6 May 2007. Now, it is my turn to give back to France what France has given me (…). A president of the Republic must love all of the French people. (…) I shall be the president of all of the French people. (…) The French people have chosen to break, to break with the ideas, the customs and the behaviours of the past. So I am going to rehabilitate work, authority, morals, respect and merit. I am going to restore honour to the nation and the national identity. (…) I am going to finish with repentance, which is a form of self-hatred ». Most of the French people were ready to adhere to this speech, even on the left. Hence the successful attempt by the new president to have a few civil personalities like, Martin Hirsch, branded as being on the left, but also fickle socialist figures like Bernard Kouchner, promoted to the position of minister of foreign affairs, or Jean-Pierre Jouyet and Jean-Marie Bockell, who became secretaries of state, to join him. But the electors soon realized that these speeches were only speeches and that the elegant, resolute man, above parties, revealed by these fine phrases, did not exactly adhere to what the television cameras showed them. Today, the whole problem is to know whether the crisis is serious or superficial, whether President Sarkozy is paying for his lack of taste, his character, his political choices, or his powerlessness when faced with the international situation. But falling out of love started with the amazement which, at the time when the media in general were rather complacently dazed, struck the French people when they saw their president’s ego being exhibited, in the intoxication of post-electoral success. They thought they had voted for an anti-sixty-eight-year-old. In fact, as Daniel Cohn-Bendit said, they had elected a real sixty-eight-year-old, taking up the principle of pleasure again, incapable of tolerating being forbidden anything. So, in France, a president of the Republic cannot take the floor at the National Assembly, it is one of the few things he is forbidden. Because he cannot bear this, Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to reform the Constitution in order to be able to take this rostrum - one more. In the beginning, it was not so serious. Just progressive disillusionment. Suddenly, opinion swung, because the French people understood that their purchasing power was not going to increase, and because, moreover, the fiscal gift given by Nicolas Sarkozy at the beginning of his term of office and intended to keep the affluent who might be tempted to leave the country in France had never been digested. They had a rude awakening. And they cast a disenchanted eye over their sarkozian vocabulary. « Transparency » promised by the president? Bling-bling exhibitionism. His energy? Excitement. The solicitude of the all azimuths « opening »? The tactics and the powdering: everyone was rubbed up the right way. Spontaneity without taboo? Reels masking powerlessness. « What do you expect of me? » asked the president, upset, at his press conference on 8 January 2008. That I exhaust funds that have already been exhausted ? Reducing discussion in French politics to the single question of purchasing power is absurd. » True, no doubt. But he was the one who had bound himself, twelve months earlier, to this commitment: « I want to be the president who increases purchasing power. » Then it is certain that Sarkozy is still this brilliant man, who makes fun of propriety - more than conservatism - knows how to talk, make decisions, and communicate. But when they have the strange feeling that they are being fooled by a conjurer, the French people demand something else. They do not want a man who only respects power and money relationships, like an adolescent who is hungry to prove his virility. Nicolas Sarkozy seems endlessly to repeat symbolically « I have some ». The French people would prefer him to tell and show them: « You have some, you people. » It is shocking to hear the coarseness of the words he uses. In private - « I am going to screw them », « we are still going to have a go at this stupid bastard » - as in public, when he forgets that the cameras of the entire Internet are running: « Give way, poor fool », was the remark he threw at a visitor to the Agricultural Show. None of this would be not so important if the economic barometer was set at fine, if the president was prepared to admit his guilt, if he agreed to question himself, if he could bear frustration, if he reasoned, weighed up, held consultations before giving way to his appetite for movement and power. The arrival of Carla Bruni, his conjugal influence, smoothed the personality of the number 1 Frenchman. But his very way of governing, autocratic, with his pets - the seven ministers whom he brought together ostensibly at the expense of the others - and his badly-gauged whims finish up feeding a climate of exacerbated mistrust. For example: he decided to have a martyred Jewish child sponsored by French schoolchildren, without telling anyone in advance. He launched the expression « politics of civilisation », when he announced his wishes concerning total improvisation on 8 January 2008. He announced that advertising would be removed from public television stations after 8pm, without having given any serious consideration to the financial consequences of this decision. He went back on his first wish, but not the second one, which he then tried laboriously to support before he forgot it, nor the third one, the consequences of which he worsened by specifying that the chairman of the public stations would be appointed directly by the Elysée. Almost a provocation. « I have work to do, I will do it, nothing will stop me », the president kept repeating. The star presenter of TF1, who made Nicolas Sarkozy angry by telling him, candidly, that he seemed like a « little boy » among the great powers of the G8, vexed him because he hit a sore spot. The president is an ex-little boy, but he remains a small man who wants to be big, very big. After all, that means strength. It is his resilience. And his weakness if he cannot bear critics, nor public opinion falling out of love, nor internal rivalries, nor his own failures. In the future, his problem will be showing that he really has essence, and that this essence is consistent. For what is most striking, from now on, is that his own troops are overtaken by doubt. And yet, if the candidate Sarkozys schedule is maintained, he cannot be accused of being sluggish. From the law on modernisation of the economy (LME) to the law against piracy in data processing, via the law on universities and having another look at institutions, it would be dishonest to assert that he is not moving. He even finds it difficult to leave once tense for another. In a while, it might be said that he is only aware of the present indicative. So he has initiated an impressive number of reforms, probably too many, which rarely go as far as he had announced, and which are not always financed. But they are all barely legible. Hence the oppositions difficulty in opposing him. And that of the majority in supporting him, more especially as he is not afraid, this is no doubt one of his qualities, taking the opposite ideology on certain subjects if he considers this to be necessary. He will have to give his action meaning again, an is team, to gain the international stature he dreams of and which he will need if he hopes to become a great president of the European Union. On the evening of his election to the Elysée, Nicolas Sarkozy had started: «I should like to say (…) that, this evening, France is back in Europe. I entreat our European partners to hear the voice of the peoples who wish to be protected, not to ignore the anger of the peoples who perceive the building of Europe (…) as the Trojan horse of all the threats transformations in the world carry in themselves. » It was a defensive speech. To build, you need courage, perseverance, patience and convictions. It is necessary to refocus on a hierarchy of principles and values, and know how to lead a team, in this particular case, that of Heads of State. These qualities, if he has them, were hidden during his first year in power, leading France. He will need a real internal cultural revolution to be able to use them on a European scale. The Marxist left, commentators argue, has lost its supremacy in French political culture. French society has finally fallen in love with capitalism and craves an injection of reforms (neoliberal reforms, naturally).Sarkozy has promised to make the exercise of the right to strike as difficult as it is in Britain. He has also advocated the dismantling of more than a century of social and labour laws contained in the Code du Travail. In doing so, Sarkozy is going against French aspirations. What is more, his staunch Atlanticism and his Huntingtonian belief in a "clash of civilisations" put him at odds with a majority of his compatriots. How then can the electoral success of Sarkozy be explained? Sarkozy’s individual “reforms” are part of a general agenda of privatisation and casualisation of employment. What exactly does the word “neo-liberal” mean in a society where most of the means of production rest in private hands and yet the state is the largest employer and has for a long time planned the economy? Have people forgotten that de Gaulle, after 1946, launched an “economic recovery plan” and that from 1958 he used Three-Year Plans? On the left and far left it is a means of demanding state control (full or partial) of Capital, without at all calling for the overthrow of capitalism, getting rid of hierarchy, money, wage-slavery and the division of labour. In both cases, the word “neo-liberalism” stops us seeing the possibility of getting rid of wage-labour, as a mode of exploitation, or of the state. In Sarkozy’s books and the programme of the UMP it is explicitly said that the state must play a greater role in technological innovation. Sarkozy emphasises that the American state finances innovation via military and space-programme research and via various federal interventions in the private sector, contrary to the official ‘neo-liberal’ ideology. Hoping that the Socialist Party might take over the reins of government and implement this anti-working class offensive instead, or propagandising for the bourgeois state to run the economy without talking about workers’ management, is a feeble response to a government which wants to attack job stability, benefits and the right of workers to organise. It is a top down answer which makes no reference to workers’ independent political activity or their ability to control and run society. Sarkozy’s attacks are very real and are contrived to emasculate the working class — but to respond with variants of liberal bourgeois republicanism or nostalgic French nationalism rather than positive agitation for working-class power means relegating socialist politics to the rank of abstract theory.  REFERENCES: http://www.eurotopics.net/en/magazin/politik-verteilerseite/frankreich-2008-07/sarkozy/ (Website retrieved on: Wednesday,18th February,2009) Magazine / Politics / France / Commentary | 01/08/2008 Article: Nicolas Sarkozy - a president with two faces By Jacqueline Remy The text is licensed under: Creative Commons license by-nc-nd/2.0/de.   Read More