June 17, 2007
Pave: Election Heartbreaks I
Le jour 33 de Sarko
With Sarko reforms imminent, the public's Sarkomania cools considerably in the Parliamentary 2e tour.
SARKOZY'S PARTY SUFFERS SHOCK SETBACK AT POLLS
PARIS June 18, 2007 (Guardian)
Historic (39.5%) -- but shy of record-breaking (39.7%: 2002 2e tour) -- voter abstention in the 2e tour favors the opposition and key LUMPs fall to voter fatigue and/or indifference and/or uninspiring campaigns and/or uninspiring candidates. As the smart money said high turnout would favor the PS, well, L'UMPs are lucky to have managed their reduced majority.
One L'UMP for whom Sarko's coattails were not long enough was the political revenant and convicted felon, former PM and current mayor of Bordeaux and Ministre d’Etat, Minister for Ecology, and Sustainable Development and Town and Country Planning (Regional Development), Alain Juppé.
SARKOZY'S SUPER-MINISTER FIGHTS
FOR SURVIVAL IN FRENCH VOTE
PARIS June 15, 2007 (AFP)
TOP FRENCH MINISTER LOSES SEAT, AND CABINET POST
BORDEAUX June 17, 2007 (AFP)
SARKOZY LOSES KEY MINISTER IN PARLIAMENTARY VOTE
PARIS June 17, 2007 (CNN/AP)
M. Juppé (49.07%) lost to Socialist Michèle Delaunay (50.93%).*
With Ex-Jack now available to be politely questioned about his roles in municipal scams and graft (108 related convictions to date), treason, defamation, and the illegal and illegitimate overthrow of foreign governments, perhaps the French public has had its fill of crooks in high places -- for the time being.
Another celebrated L'UMP loser was Jean-Louis Bruguière, terror-judge notorious for indicting almost the whole of the Rwandan government on the novel theory that it had come to power by ending a genocide that it had engineered. So busy was the good judge indicting Rwandans who cleverly hid their misdeeds by suppressing the slaughter of Rwandans, he never had time to sort through the abundant testimony and evidence pointing to France in the Rwandan genocide.
TOUGH FRENCH JUDGE TAKES ON A NEW TRIAL
VILLENEUVE-SUR-LOT** June 10, 2007 (LAT)
ANTI-TERRORIST JUDGE DEFEATED IN ELECTION
VILLENEUVE-SUR-LOT June 17, 2007 (AFP)
M. Bruguière (47.71%) lost to Socialist Jérôme Cahuzac (52.29%).*
A third telling -- but less surprising loss -- was that of the hurriedly cobbled-up Arno Klarsfeld campaign.
ISRAELI MAY JOIN SARKOZY'S CABINET
May 9, 2007 (JPost) - Arno Klarsfeld, a 41-year-old lawyer, undertook several missions for Sarkozy when he was interior minister, dealing with France's illegal immigration problem.Born in France, Klarsfeld aligned himself with Sarkozy and the Right after he fell out of favor with French leftists when he acquired Israeli citizenship in 2002 and joined the Border Police. He served at checkpoints around Bethlehem.
CELEBRITY ARNO KLARSFELD
DEFIES THE SOCIALISTS IN PARIS
PARIS June 5, 2007 (Rue89) - Call [Arno Klarsfeld] a parachutist because he’s been assigned the 12th arrondissement without strong roots there. Arno Klarsfeld responds that he does know the neighborhood a little, after all: he’s crossed it while competing in the Paris Marathon.... Running against Klarsfeld for the MoDem party is Jean-François Pernin, who’ll be seeking to build on the 22% of votes that MoDem chief François Bayrou gained in last month’s Presidential elections. But Klarsfeld’s principal rival is the Socialist party’s Sandrine Mazetier, who has the support of a big-name Socialist: former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn. In the Presidential election last month, the Socialist candidate – Ségolène Royale – won a short lead over Nicolas Sarkozy in this district. That means the Socialist Mazetier has a good shot at winning this seat.
PARIS, 8E CIRC : KLARSFELD
NE SIÈGERA PAS À L'ASSEMBLÉE
[PARIS, 8TH CIRC: KLARSFELD
WILL NOT SIT WITH THE PARLIAMENT]
18 Juin 2007 (TF1)
M. Klarsfeld (44.1%) lost to Socialist Sandrine Mazetier (55.9%).*
All three losers, Messrs. Juppé et Bruguière et Klarsfeld, are close associates of Sarko, however, it would be reckless for the opposition to mistake these losses as a repudiation of the polpular president.
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* All numbers sourced at TF1.
**This commune, from which M. Bruguière hails, bills itself as "the happiest place in France". France, which attentive Pave readers will recall, is an overall middling happy sort of place, making Villeneuve-sur-Lot the exemplar of middling French happiness.
PFFT (What is this?): Republic de Sarko émoussé 3½ | Rayonnement français 2
Posted by Damian at June 17, 2007 08:45 PMThanks for the quick and excellent analysis in ENGLISH. My French sucks, so I appreciate being able to read it in my native tongue.
I just hope that Sarko has the conjones to take such actions as to eliminate the CDI.
DB,
Glad you have found us here at our temporary home.
For those who don't know the CDI (Contrat à durée indéterminée) is a sort of job-for-life hire.
The traditional French CDI, which still accounts for almost 90 percent of employment contracts, has an average probation period of 1.5 months, compared with 6 months in Germany, 9 to 12 months in Denmark and one year in Britain. After that, dismissals can cost employers 12 to 24 months of salary. Disputes take a year on average and are judged by employment tribunals, which must rule in favor of the employee where there is reasonable doubt.
... The CDI has made the labor market doubly rigid. According to Raymond Torres, an employment specialist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the contract not only discourages companies from hiring and firing, it also discourages employees from leaving jobs voluntarily - not least because severance payments that increase with seniority make it advantageous to be fired.
... French unemployment has several root causes, including high payroll taxes and minimum wage, an education system that produces as many as 150,000 school dropouts every year and a lack of efficient job counseling. But a rigid labor code, which makes it hard for companies to adjust to changes in their order books and burdens them with a complex legal framework, is at the heart of the problem, [François Vergne, a lawyer in Paris with Morgan Lewis, a leading employment law firm in the United States,] said.
DGB
Posted by: Damian at June 18, 2007 04:02 AMan education system that produces as many as 150,000 school dropouts every year
Yes, and take a look at any list of the top 100 Universities in the World – State universities and Grandes Ecoles have fallen flat.
This is disheartening to me – especially since my niece is studying in France right now (high school exchange student).
The fact that the socialists did better than expected here leads me to think Sarkozy may have a bit of trouble getting some of his reforms through.
Remember soon after Chirac was elected, the long strikes and demonstrations forced him to can most of his reform ideas.
Andy,
Sarko is many things, but he is not Jack.
Jack, like Bill Clinton, only wanted to be elected. Once elected he only wanted to stay elected.
Sarko does not have Jack's soft spot for mob rule.
With or without the "blue tide", Sarko will have difficulty passing his reforms, because the French secretly hope that everything wrong can somehow be finessed. And when that hope is fully frustrated, ah, well, the French are happy enough with keeping everything wrong.
Regards,
DGB
