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Sarkozy And The Constitution
"Inasmuch as the French people have rejected the whole treaty in a legally binding act, how can the President of the Republic alone decide to have the majority of its provisions ratified by the Parliament?" - some harsh criticism of Nicolas Sarkozy's support for the EU Treaty from French constitutional law expert Anne-Marie Le Pourhiet, translated by John Rosenthal in World Politics Review.
"Inasmuch as the text limits itself in fact to reproducing three-quarters of the provisions of the proposed Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, it would undoubtedly have been simpler just to take the original text and erase just those symbolic aspects that have been abandoned. It is not hard to understand, however, why this option was rejected, since it would have made the contempt shown for the will of the French and Dutch peoples -- who rejected the latter treaty in referendums in the summer of 2005 -- too flagrantly obvious."
The compromise, she writes, means "A more contorted legal procedure has never been seen."
Mme Le Pourhiet describes Sarkozy's approval of the treaty as a "coup d'etat" and a "violation of public trust."
"In the absence of either an insurrection or impeachment, we will be left with nothing more to do than to shed tears over our voluntary servitude, realizing that our elected representatives represent very well what we have in fact ourselves become: doormats," she concludes. Lessons there for Britain, too.
Sarkozy's obligations to his EU colleagues clearly overide the rights of his fellow citizens. As British parliamentarians consider drafting a new "British" Bill of Rights, one has to wonder where do national rights end, and EU obligations begin?
Martyr's Letter
Sarko has also been criticised for his demand that schools across France read the last letter of Communist activist Guy Môquet, who was executed aged 17 by the Germans in 1941.
Teachers have complained that instruction that the letter be read in schools this week "interfered with their teaching plans." Communists griped that the right-wing President's attachment to a Communist icon is too ironic for them to stomach, and staged a protest at the Paris Metro station named for the "martyr."
Others commented on whether or not mawkish readings of Môquet's moving letter would have any effect on today's youngsters: Sarkozy hopes they will be inspired with a sense of national duty, self-sacrifice and resistance spirit.
In an excellent blog on Prospect's France Profonde pages, Tim King looks deeper into the Môquet myth. Did you know that the boy was arrested for breaking French law by fly-posting Communist propaganda by French forces?
"He was resisting entirely French legislation enacted by a democratically elected French government."
"Of course we shall never know whether the young man really was willing to sacrifice his life", writes King, "when he went out to post his propaganda sheets he cannot have expected that if caught he would be shot: the offense in itself was not a capital one."
Môquet was carrying an anti-capitalist, anti-Semitic poem at the time of his arrest too - perhaps he's an early example of "the growing solidarity between the left and revolutionary Islam" - interesting a week after Che Guevara's children found themselves co-opted into an Iranian celebration of the left-wing icon's "Islamist identity"?
