The Honeymoon Is Extended
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
So, Nicolas Sarkozy is doing rather well, attempts to downgrade his political triumph notwithstanding:
President Nicolas Sarkozy appears to have won a mandate for change after his party swept first-round parliamentary elections, and he is picking up speed in his plans to overhaul France's welfare state. But rivals say he should watch out.
Sarkozy's expected parliamentary majority is inflated by French election rules and because many opponents threw up their hands and did not vote in Sunday's first round. Immigrant-heavy suburbs are still seething after 2005 riots, and students are dead-set against some of Sarkozy's reforms.
A major misstep, critics warn, and the streets again could explode in anger.
Sarkozy's conservative UMP party dominated Sunday's vote, the opposition Socialists fared poorly and fringe parties all but disappeared _ leaving the UMP well-placed to expand its majority in the National Assembly in Sunday's decisive second-round vote.
Sarkozy, well aware of the risk of resistance to his plans, has reached out to the people most threatened by them: negotiating with unions, bringing a leading Socialist into his government and naming a woman of North African descent as justice minister. On Monday, he bowed to labor union demands and scrapped longer hours for teachers.
Read on . . .
This may all sound Pyrrhic in nature, but it is impossible to overstate the significance of the complete and total Socialist collapse in both the Presidential elections of a month ago and the recent legislative elections. To dismiss Sarkozy's victories by saying that the Socialists just gave up hardly works; if the political landscape were not against the Socialists, they would have fought hard for any and all political gains that they could find and achieve.
"But Sarkozy is capitulating to the interest groups," you protest. Well, he could be said to be doing that. At the same time, he will have to engage in some kind of cohabitation and compromise to keep the streets from exploding and to the extent that Sarkozy might turn out to be something of a disappointment for those who wish to see freer markets in France, said disappointment will stem primarily from the fact that Sarkozy is a dirigiste, not because his tactical maneuvering reflects a cowardice in taking on the system.
Besides which, Sarkozy can be best viewed as something of a transitional figure; one who weans the French gradually from their statist and sclerotic past. In time, a genuine classical liberal will ascend to the Presidency of France and find that the way there may very well have been paved--however modestly--by the Presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy.