President Jacques Chirac locked himself into the Elysee Palace with a trusted band of advisers yesterday arguing over the fate of his prime minister following the Right's electoral drubbing.
The French head of state failed to emerge or to offer a clear statement to an expectant nation during a day of frantic consultations on whether to fire his prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
[...]
The Left, led by the Socialist Party, won 50.1 per cent of the vote, the first time since President Mitterrand's re-election in 1988 that it has claimed more than half the ballots cast.
The Left now controls 20 of the 22 regions in mainland France and Corsica. Before Sunday, the Right controlled 14. All it has now is Alsace.
[...]
Sunday's result was interpreted as punishment for M Raffarin's ambitious reform programme. The prime minister has tried to do M Chirac's bidding, reforming pensions, very slightly trimming civil service and teaching posts, and cutting income tax.
[As we all know, you can't cut social programs and taxes, not with the welfare state France has on its hands!--Jen]
[...]
The real decision may be whether to sack M Raffarin now or to wait until the European elections in June when the Right is expected to fare badly again.
But he has been beaten back by repeated strikes and denunciations by everyone from teachers to self-styled intellectuals, 40,000 of whom signed a petition recently calling the government "anti-intellectual".
[Ooh, that hurts bad! LOL--J.T.]
[...]
The business daily Les Echos said: "Here we have the situation of a country that must reform and a public opinion that refuses to do so. A country that has always pushed back the deadlines, always juggled with financial constraints without ever accepting [the need] to look reality in the face."
[...]
Despite M Chirac's efforts to shift the blame, Sunday's vote was clearly a rejection of him as much as of his beleaguered prime minister.
The traditional shape of French politics is still recovering from the 2002 elections when many on the Left were forced to contribute to M Chirac's overwhelming re-election simply to show their hostility to M Le Pen.
[Le Pen, despite his right ideas about immigration, is a nightmare because he's a rabid anti-Semite!]
In Sunday's election, they took their revenge and corrected any false impressions given by the 82 per cent won by the president two years ago.
[...]
Dominique de Villepin, the colourful foreign minister, has been discounted on the grounds that he has never run for elected office. But his closeness to M Chirac may yet catapult him into the job.
The French just get stranger and stranger; I don't know which is worse: the fact that Chirac is considered to be on the "Right" or that France went Socialist without a Madrid-like AQ attack.
These folks are clearly lost, with no sign of a sane leader in sight.
(Chirac and Raffarin will fight for their jobs like crazy, not only to stay in power, but because the minute they leave office, both face major corruption trials, too.)
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