Category — Politics

Here are some picture from the celebration on Sunday night.  You’ve probably seen the images already, but these (except the first one) I can vouch for myself.

This first picture appeared in the French edition of the Huffington Post, and from the light, was probably taken immediately after the result was officially announced at 8 p.m.  (We could tell a good two hours before that–by 6 p.m., that is–that the results being announced on Belgian sites would indeed be confirmed, when, the Socialists having put the word out that they would hold their victory celebration in the Place de la Bastille, the sky was suddenly full of the sound of heavy helicopters, soon to be followed by truck after truck of CRS riot police.)  So this picture could have been taken any time from 7 p.m. to maybe 8:30.  These are a whole lot of people.  I didn’t take the picture, but I’ll vouch that at 9:30 p.m. there were this many and maybe more.  See below.

At about 9:30 p.m., Ann and I and Penelope (of the Red Wheel Barrow bookstore) went out to see what was happening.  It was clear that François Hollande was not going to make it to the Place de la Bastille for several more hours.  (In fact, he had only just left Tulle in the center of France, and didn’t reach the Place until about 1 a.m.)  The actions of the crowd therefore displayed a certain ambivalence.  On the one hand, there were large groups of people streaming along rue Saint Antoine–the most direct route–toward the Place, late starters like we were.

There were people in most of the windows overlooking the rue Saint Antoine, most of them partying, and whenever any of the people in a building would wave at the people on the street, they’d be greeted with loud cheers and shouts and whistles.

At the same time, though, many of the people who had already reached the Place de la Bastille had  been there in some cases for up to four hours, and were faced with the prospect of a further long wait, so many were flowing in the other direction, away from the Bastille, either going home or in search of food and a place to sit.

Food trucks, which the police had allowed past the barricades on rue Saint Antoine were, as the French are wont to say, “taken by assault.”   (We were impressed that the cops had had the sense to let the food trucks in.  That contributed a lot to keeping the crowd good humored during its very very long wait.)

Trying to avoid the crush, we jogged up the rue de la Bastille, where it was reassuring to see that important cultural institutions like Bofinger did not feel threatened by the prospect of a Socialist president.  It was, you can see, calmly proceeding with its late Sunday dinner service, unconcerned by the crowds streaming past.

On the other hand, rue de la Bastille did us in.  Anyone who has heard my lecturette on why the boulevard Beaumarchais is the first boulevard in the world (explicitly so named), and how we know that, already knows that this little street was, until the construction of the Grands Boulevards, the only way in and out of the walled city of Paris to the east.  The police barricades effectively recreated that situation, and now as then this little street was hopelessly inadequate to the task of moving that much traffic.  Throw in two EMS vehicles which were stationed there in case of emergency to gum up the works further, and you had created a bottle neck we simply couldn’t get through.  Even with me leading the way, at more than 100 kilos and swinging my metal cane like a cossack, we were simply stalled, and ultimately pushed back by the crowd leaving the Place along this little street.  There was a lesson in hydraulics there, I suspect.

So we turned back.  At that moment we gave the situation about one more hour of relative calm before crowd and police tempers finally snapped and the riot started, but when we got home and turned the TV back on, we saw the PS had done a clever thing on their parts: the stage had been set up on the Place, and it was now populated with musicians.  As it is known to do, music soothed the savage breast, and made it possible for the crowd to maintain its cool for another 3 hours until Hollande finally made it in from Le Bourget.  And then at the end, how did the police get him into the Place–no mean feat?  (Ha! you didn’t think of that little problem, did you?)  I think they took him through the Bastille Métro stop.  The station itself had been closed by the police for hours, of course.  I think they took him to one of its distant entrances, walked him down and under the crowds, then popped him up at the exit right in front of the entrance to the Opéra.  Or so it seemed on the TV.  By this point, most of the musicians were looking exhausted, and were grateful that they could relinquish the stage to the politicians.

The evening before, at my second Cinco de Mayo party, two couples solemnly maintained that Sarko had a surprise to spring on the Socialists, but having myself been in that position all too many times in the past, I could recognize the undertone of desperation in those declarations.  And so a good time was had by all.   Or mostly all, anyway.

by guest blogger Marc Cogan

Saturday showed us the last of the scheduled demonstrations against the Sarkozy government’s reform of the pension and retirement system–or, at least, of the current big change proposed by President Sarkozy: raising the retirement age from  60 to 62.   Now, the French unions and French workers are not delusional.  They too know that in this day and age retiring at 60 is a luxury few if any countries can afford.  But the unions are also all too aware that any change in the pension system passed into law this year will be only the first of a far more extensive set of concessions yet to come.  Rather than have the changes sprung on them one by one, the unions would like to be at the table negotiating the whole longterm package.

The series of impressive demonstrations put together by the major French unions over the last few months against the new laws–marches and strikes that were impressive both for the size of their participation and the breadth of public support–were more likely to have been aimed at leveraging an invitation to the unions to negotiate the new shape of the pension system than at stopping the passage of this first change.  Given the Sarkozy government’s majorities in both houses of the legislature, passage of the law was never in much doubt.  In fact, the law changing the retirement age from 60 to 62 received final approval on Tuesday, Oct. 26, when the Senate passed the final version of the bill.  This was more than a week before Saturday’s scheduled march, which would have made the march both futile and anti-climactic if its purpose had been to block passage of the law.

Seen in the context of a longer battle over the ultimate overhaul of the pension system, though, Saturday’s demonstrations took on their own appropriate strategic value, and in  this context were probably meant to be the culmination of the whole suite of demonstrations.   From that standpoint, they must have been something of a disappointment.  The weather certainly did not cooperate with the demonstrators.  Saturday dawned heavily overcast, and in Paris the rain began before noon–a steady, cold, and sometimes heavy rain.  Turnout was down, obviously, but in Paris at least, I’d say participation was still quite high.

The demonstration followed a familiar route: Place de la République to Place de la Bastille to Place de la Nation.  The organizers are real pros at this, knowing how to slow the marchers down so that the entire route is filled for hours; knowing when to hold marchers in place so that lines which may have gotten a little stretched and thin thicken up and seem more impressive.  As you can see from the photos, while umbrellas were de rigeur, the boulevards were pretty well filled, and for the more or less “standard” length of time for the itinerary.  (The photos were taken along the Boulevard Beaumarchais near the Place de la Bastille.)  The end of the marchers had still not filed through the Place de la Bastille more than two hours after the start of the march.

Spirits seemed good, despite the weather and despite the Senate vote which had already made the retirement age change law.  Many of the marching groups chanted calls for “tous ensemble, grève générale” (“all together now, general strike”).   While a general strike hardly seems likely at the present time–no noticeable public support for such a move, nor would this be the appropriate or most effective moment for it–Saturday’s marchers clearly recognized the need for some way of keeping the pressure on the government, and further agitation is no doubt being planned.

This post by GUEST BLOGGER  Macondo (Andrew McRae)

Today  (Tuesday 15th June), while walking to the Place de la Bastille, Carolyne and I literally stumbled upon the large demonstration by la Force Ouvrière, the largest French workers’ union, against the French government’s plans to raise the pension age and other austerity measures affecting workers and their rights and conditions of retirement. The government was to make its first recommnedations the following day, June 16th.

The large demonstration marched past the Bastille monument and continued along rue de Lyon towards the Gare de Lyon. I don’t know where it finished or where they assembled, but at the end the crowd was addressed by the FO’s leader, Jean-Claude Mailly, as shown on the organisation’s website. The FO estimated the attendance at more than 70,000 but the Police estimated about 25,000. It brought back many memories for me of large demonstrations in Melbourne, especially against the Vietnam war nearly 40 years ago, and in support of Land Rights for Australia’s indigenous people. I remained in the area of the Bastille for 90 minutes, starting well after the march began, and my guess is that the crowd was far in excess of the Police’s estimate.

Demonstrators had come from all over France, mainly manual workers, but covering many different professions. They included metal-workers, agricultural workers, firemen, ambulance staff and police; all age groups and many ethnic groups were involved.

When we returned home several hours later we tried to find some commentary on the demonstration from news websites, but all we found was Le Monde describing it as a wasted effort which caused little disruption. Apparently the internecine disputes between the various labour organisations mean that the resistance to the government’s plans may well be splintered, but after what promises to be a long period of privation for many in Europe the demonstrations might become more populist and widespread, perhaps less peaceful.

I now know what it’s like to be caught in the middle of a huge demonstration, and be unable to move. Well, almost. I was walking along the rue du Faubourg St Antoine early this afternoon, on my way to BHV when groups of demonstrators, in support of the national strike, began marching past. They were all converging on the Place de la Bastille of course, and I was headed that way too. I was so intent on taking photos that it was too late by the time I realised I was caught in the middle of the Place, surrounded on all sides by the demonstrators, almost unable to move.

But what a peaceful, amicable affair it seemed to be. Sure, there was chanting and speeches (several simultaneously), but I saw nothing unruly, no pushing or shoving. It took me about an hour to cross the Place de la Bastille. There were no cars anywhere, just a dense throng of people, vans selling food and drink, balloons, people climbing on the Bastille column itself, television trucks, families with children, babies, and dogs.

The General Confederation of Workers (CGT) estimated the crowd at 300,000, and I wouldn’t be surprised, although the police claim the figure to be 65,000 (the unions claim a total of 1.5 million demonstrated all over France).

What struck me especially when I was in the middle of the throng was the atmosphere of calm solidarity, and the passion for social justice, that today’s strike was all about. We don’t see this sort of thing in Australia any more. We’ve long given up any hope that a strike will make any difference to anything. Today’s strike is to protest against the erosion of the standard of living, and also the so-callled ‘workplace reforms’ that we ‘enjoy’ in the Anglophone countries.

I was surprised, though, to hear that what had been reported on UK television, and probably elsewhere, was the conflict and car-torching that happened much later in the day near the Opera, and linked to the ‘dispersion of the demonstrators’. These could not have been the people I saw, and are much more likely to have been professional agitors, or disaffected troublemakers cashing in on the publicity.

I’m very glad I was right in the thick of it for an hour. It gave me a good insight into the passion of ordinary workers for social justice, and the calm and reasonable way in which they express it.

(This picture of Martine Aubry is from Liberation)

We’ve been hearing the idiom ‘d’un cheveu’ in the French news lately, so I decided to translate Yvan Amar’s explanation of it from his Les Mots de la Semaine column on Radio France:

In France they’ve been voting to elect the head of the Socialist Party. Of course, not everyone has voted, only the members of the party. And Martine Aubry has come first by a whisker (in French the idiom is ‘d’un cheveu’: by one hair). This is one of those expressions we hear often, and Abdalla Hamlaoui asked us what it means, and especially how it can be explained.

Everyone understands its meaning: Martine Aubrey had more votes than Segolene Royal, but very few! The difference was minimal, miniscule. So, we know that a hair is very fine, and often we use this word to express something which is so small as to be almost nothing.

But there is another reason for using this word. We say sometimes that one competitor has won by a head. This means that they have won by very little. So, one hair is even less than one head, but we are still using the same type of image because the hair is on the head. We also say quite often a ‘short head’, if we want to add that it’s only a little difference, or we might even say a ‘very short head’. And sometimes we keep only the adjective, as in a ‘short victory’, or a ‘very short victory’.

The photo is from German newspaper Die Welt.

There’s so much going on in PARIS political circles, I don’t know where to begin.

I think I’ll leave Mesdames Royal and Aubry to sort out who’s boss of the Socialist Party this week before I write about them, leaving me to concentrate on Madame le Ministre Dati.

Rachida Dati is Sarkozy’s Justice Minister and the first Muslim woman to hold a high government post. Since coming to office, she has pushed through many of Sarkozy’s law and order reforms, and is now facing opposition from the magistrates’ union on a number of issues, including overcrowded prisons with high suicide rates.

Now, at 42, Dati is to give birth to her first child in January, but has so far refused to name the father, saying her personal life is ‘complicated’, a descriptor that seems to have been lifted straight from Facebook. Dati has for some time, however, been wearing a large, expensive looking ring, on the fourth finger of her left hand. Until last week, anyway, when the so-called sympathetic-to-Sarkozy newspaper Le Figaro published an interview with Dati about her plans to reform criminal law.

This topic has been overshadowed, though, by the interest in her ring, or rather the disappearance of it. The photograph accompanying the interview was one that had originally appeared in Le Figaro in June, at that time complete with the ring, but this time with the ring photoshopped out. The motivations for this piece of journalistic creativity remain obscure. Was it a desire to de-bling a member of Sarkozy’s government, to detract attention from the fourth finger of her left hand, or something else? Whatever it was, it had the opposite effect.

No doubt everyone will be watching to see just who visits her next January. Mind you, she says she’ll only be taking a week’s maternity leave.

(Readers of German can also read the article in Die Welt from which the photo was taken.)