You are in:
- Archives » 2006 » July 2006
Sarkozy's Manifesto
Nicolas Sarkozy, the probable centre-right challenger for France's presidency next spring, has published a book outlining his vision of a new, enervated nation. But will the 281-page Témoignage be a springboard to the Elysee - or history's longest political suicide note?
Témoignage (Testimony) is a curious mixture of the personal and the political. It records the interior minister's troubled marriage - his wife Cécilia is reported to have left him thanks to his relentless campaigning - and the couple's high profile reconciliation. However, its main focus is Sarkozy's diagnosis and cure for France's economic and existential woes. His findings are unlikely to unite the country.
He's not the first candidate to make a foray into publishing. Prime minister (and possible rival for the centre-right candidacy) Dominique de Villepin has published numerous volumes on France's history, doubtless positioning himself as the glorious past's inevitable destiny. Socialist deputy Ségolène Royal has used a website to compile a manifesto, echoing the concerns and complaints of activists and online citizens.
Central to Sarkozy's vision is the demand that the French should work harder. This could mean abandoning the 35 hour week, an invention by the previous Socialist administration which has left France with the shortest working hours in the west. While unions initially opposed the 35 hour week, they've since come to consider it part of the acquis in what they see as their constant struggle against encroaching economic liberalism.
Sarko believes that France has undermined 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?” Analysts could read this statement in different ways: Could he be referring to tax cuts, which would certainly make it worth getting up in the morning? Or would a Sarkozy presidency get tough on France's benefit-drawing classes, slashing the dole to force the unemployed into the job market? Or both?
He also trained his sights on the current, "monarchical" style of the French presidency, best exemplified by the incumbent Jacques Chirac. A French president shouldn't be "aloof", Sarkozy argues, but hands-on, involved in day-to-day politics, making "tough decisions" - rather like Sarkozy's own performance at the interior ministry, perhaps.
Chirac, as the Economist remembers this week, started his presidency in 1995 with the promise of reform. France, however, had different ideas, and took to the streets to force the resignation of the then prime minister Alain Juppé, along with his reform programme. Chirac has made few attempts to reform France since - and each time one of his ministers has attempted to do so, the response from the street quickly makes certain that any progress will be halted or severely diluted.
Prevented from reforming, Chirac looked instead to play the president's traditional role of Republican father figure. In a sense, he was forced into this role by his luck in winning a place in the 2002 presidential run-off against Jean Marie Le Pen: Over 80 percent of voters backed Chirac, and he has since felt a debt to those on the left who urged their supporters to vote for "the crook rather than the fascist."
Sarkozy plays down personal differences with his one-time mentor, but seems to disagree with everything from Chirac's style of government to his support for Turkey's membership of the EU. He has his differences with Chirac's symbolic role, too: He urges the French to drop their insistence on speaking their own language in international relations, and learn to love English like everyone else. Chirac won't be the only traditionalist infuriated by this proposal, though it's likely he'll be the most visible - earlier this year, the president raised eyebrows by storming out of an EU meeting because the speaker, a Frenchman, had the audacity to address his international audience in English.
Chirac has positioned himself as France personified: Ostensibly of the right, he has sympathised with anti-globalisation demagogues, has called for taxes in flights and international transactions, has warned that economic liberalism poses a threat as great as communism. He has seemed all-too-willing to construct a Europe based on opposition to the United States.
Sarkozy wants to reverse much of this. He also disagreed with Chirac's threat to veto plans to invade Iraq in 2003 - perhaps the only decision the president has ever taken that has enjoyed the overwhelming support of French citizens.
Which brings us to the outcome of Sarkozy's text. France is sweltering in a heatwave, and while Sarko's publisher hopes to sell 130,000 copies of his book, it is difficult to imagine it as beach-side reading (his views on his marriage only cover four pages). Few outside the media are considering next year's presidential race, and France's malaise is one of the things citizens hope to forget when they head off for much of July and August.
However, the interior minister has made a lot of enemies in his 51 years, and they'll be studying his Testimony closely.
Much of what the interior minister proposes sounds suspiciously like liberalism: Sarkozy has proposed a "rupture" with the past, warned that France's beloved Social Model "isn't working", called for closer relations with the wicked USA and urged France to learn from the example of the British. His call for "the restoration of certain values of the Republican right: work, respect for authority, the family, individual responsibility" sounds suspiciously authoritarian. Moreoever, his claim that the British, with a GDP ten percent higher than that of France, can buy houses in France because "the standard of life of the British is higher than that of the French” seems to suggest the opposite - the British buy houses in France because despite its manifest problems, France's lifestyle is much more appealling than Britain's.
None of these are likely to be easy sells in France, where even timid reforms are met with furious street protests.
Sarkozy is gambling that France isn't averse to reform: It just hasn't been blessed with a leader willing or able to sell reform defy the inevitable protests to stick with it. His book aims to show that he could be that man: His opponents, however, will use his proposals to show that Sarko represents everything that France fears most.
