Reconstruction

By Ignacio Ramonet
Le Monde diplomatique
May 2007

Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory on 6 May with 53% of the votes in the second round of the presidential election marks a turning-point in the history of the fifth republic. It is not simply a matter of the French right remaining in power, as it has been since 1995 and before that from 1958-1981. The programme presented by Sarkozy, as UMP (Union pour un mouvement populaire) candidate, and the forces he sought to gather round him, represent a major change of direction, making him the first French president to be at once neo-liberal, authoritarian, pro-American and pro-Israeli.

The deliberate smokescreen created by a campaign peppered with eclectic references ranging from Joan of Arc to Léon Blum (the leftwing prime minister of the interwar years) cannot disguise Sarkozy’s political profile. Though he claims that the state will protect France and the French people, his economic and social programme draws on old Thatcherite remedies and favours those whom fortune has already favoured. His republican sallies cannot obscure his security-based vision of society in which repression is the only answer to the claims of the lower classes and the young.

The former may explain the latter; his apparent gaffe about the genetic origins of paedophilia and suicide tells us a lot about the theories that inspire him. And though he has tried to play down the effects of seeking President Bush’s blessing, he has not abandoned his intention to align himself more closely with American policies, including in the Middle East, and to bury the question of the May 2005 referendum on the European Union constitutional treaty.

Sarkozy’s programme is extensive and the ’clients’ to whom he is determined to sell it are no less so. The manoeuvres to win over François Bayrou’s supporters between the first and second ballots cannot wipe out months spent poaching Jean-Marie Le Pen’s. On the pretext of converting Le Pen’s troops to democracy, Sarkozy took over the well-worn themes of the far right – from supporting the idea of a ministry for immigration and national identity to adopting the slogan “Love France or leave”, hunting down illegal immigrants and abolishing the 1945 act on the protection of minors. None of his predecessors had gone to such lengths to get elected, and we should stop to take the full measure of this before we welcome the retreat of the National Front.

But Sarkozy’s success is not just due to his own efforts and the massive support he received in the media, or to the perverse effects of electing the president by universal suffrage; the cult of the personality, demagogy and strategic voting. The main factor was the absence of any real political alternative to the right and the far right. The total vote for the left in the first round – 36.44% – was lower than at any time since 1969. And for good reason. In Ségolène Royal, the Socialist party had a candidate who succeeded in erasing painful memories of the Socialists’ rout in the 2002 presidential elections but had nothing to offer that could mobilise popular support. Especially since the Communist party, far left and the ecologists did not join forces with her to maintain the momentum of the great popular movements in defence of social security and pensions that led to a resounding “no” to the 2005 EU referendum and anger in the suburbs. The main issue, transcending complaints about the system or individuals, is the inability to devise an anti-capitalist policy for France and for Europe.

This is the ground on which reconstruction must start, and soon. If the right and far right win in the upcoming parliamentary elections, they will try to put in place a policy of social destruction: a single work contract; restrictions on the right to strike; abolition of labour laws, death duties and wealth tax; further dismantling of public services, social security and pensions; cuts in health benefits and civil service recruitment; a crackdown on immigrants; revival of a neo-liberal Europe that supports US policies etc. The left will need to summon all its strength to resist this unprecedented onslaught and present some prospect of change.

Le Monde diplomatique is not affiliated to any party or association and is not a militant newspaper. But it is committed to values that it has defended for decades, and it will contribute in its own way to an alternative intellectual debate by trying to provide a better understanding of the geopolitical realities of the modern world, reporting on social and political developments and playing a full part in the current discussions of ideas. This in the cause of reconstruction.