Good riddance, Sarkozy!

"La France forte" or "Strong France"
was Sarkozy's campaign slogan.

NEW YORK CITY
In one of the most memorable lines of his presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy threw at a French citizen who dared refuse to shake his hand, "Get lost, asshole!" ("Casse-toi, pauvre con!" in the original French- Watch the YouTube video) At this week's second round of the presidential election, the French people returned the compliment sending Sarko packing.

Two years ago, in a blog called "Sarkozy: La France c'est moi" I alerted my countrymen to the dangers of the presidency of the authoritarian and egomaniac bullshitter who tricked us into trusting him with the nation's top job. It took five years but finally the French people saw through him and gave him what Churchill once called, when he was on the receiving end of it, "the order of the boot." And rightly so.

This is of course, only Part 1 of the Sarkozy defenestration. Part 2 should be to prosecute him for the various abuses in power (some of which I mentioned in the same blog) and convict him. Hopefully this time we'll have a convicted French president who will serve his sentence, unlike Chirac (see my blog, "Real crime, fake justice") Then we could say that we have made a qualitative jump on the democratic scale by ensuring that justice is meted out to ALL citizens regardless of social status. We would thus show the way to other Western countries to send Blair, Bush & Co to jail for the crimes they have committed and for which they enjoy a scandalous full impunity.

I have seen press reports about how François Hollande "won" the election. That is simply untrue. Sarkozy lost it. Just look at the figures, less than 2% separated each candidate from victory, hardly the mark of a landslide. And yet, considering Sarkozy's disastrous record and abysmal approval ratings, Hollande should have won by a handsome 60% at least. But are we surprised at the poor showing by the Socialist candidate?

Not really. After all, he was not the first candidate for his party's nomination; that was Dominique Strauss-Kahn who was disqualified after that little incident at the Sofitel hotel in this city last year. Hollande was not even the second choice, that was party chief Martine Aubry who dithered so long about running that she finally lost to him. Many Socialist Party activists even toyed with the idea of letting Hollande's former partner, Ségolène Royal, have a second try at the presidency, but thank God they thought better of it at the last moment (I used to think that  the US with George W. Bush and Sarah Palin had a monopoly on idiots running for the presidency, but obviously in France we also have our share.) Unlike Barack Obama who fought tooth and nail to get the job (what he did with it is another issue and will be the subject of a blog come November), François Hollande was just lucky to be the least bad man at the right place at the right moment.

"Sarkozy, Outgoing President!"

So François Hollande won by default. Will he be up to the task? Will he finally solve the crippling debt crisis we have been suffering from for the past several years now? Well, considering that in his thirty years as a party apparatchik, lowly MP or local politician in a sleepy rural town he never displayed any conviction, vision or signed any remarkable policies, that would be quite a miracle. A couple of months ago, I caught him campaigning on a bright Sunday morning in a market close to my Paris home, at the Bastille. Since the debt crisis is the direct result of banking misbehavior, I put the question to him:

"Monsieur Hollande, are you going to nationalize the banks?"

"At any rate, we will reform them," he replied.

"Is that a promise?" I asked grabbing his arm. With Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris smiling that phoney smile of his just behind him, the then-candidate-now-president nodded his head reiterating that policy decision before leaning forward to kiss a kid and shake hands with well-wishers.

In case you don't believe me, here are the videos I made (they are of course in French, I appear at the end of the first video, and in the second you can hear my voice asking the question at 00:40 followed by Hollande's answer.)

So Hollande is on record promising bank reform and to get us out of the debt mess these banks brought us in. After the wasted twelve years with Chirac and five Sarkozy years, it would be great to finally have a president who can deliver.

Unfortunately, considering his record, my advice to you is not to hold your breath. We are used in France (and other Western pseudo-democracies) to being betrayed by our political class. As we say, Plus ça change...

Sarkozy: "La France, c'est moi"

PARIS
Three hundred years ago France reached the height of authoritarian political power with Louis XIV famously saying, "L'Etat c'est moi:"  what a US president would, much later, adapt as "the buck stops here." Actually the Sun King refined his political theory under one tagline, "un seul roi, une seule loi, une seule foi":  One king (guess who), one law (his), one faith (who else's?).

Fast-forward to the 21st century and you could be excused if you wondered that so little has changed in the intervening centuries. The republican monarch presiding over the French acts as if neither time nor the little episode known as the French Revolution have occurred. Let's just mention  three recent events.

First, after their disgraceful behavior at soccer's World Cup tournament in South Africa, the French team returned home last week to widely felt opprobrium. The President immediately summoned their captain to the Elysée Palace for a dressing down, and you could tell that, had we lived in earlier time, the firing squad would have been lined up. What made this even more shocking was that on that same day, France went through a crippling strike protesting the public pension reforms the Sarkozy administration had launched. With millions of protesters on the streets (I could hear the deafening noise from my apartment by the Bastille) doesn't the President, people wondered, have other more pressing matters  to attend to than to admonish the national soccer team for a dreadful performance? 


Then, his only reaction was that those reforms were made even more necessary by the economic crisis and that people should accept a reduction in their incomes and purchasing power until the budget deficit was brought under control. Nothing wrong with that idea, except that it never crossed Sarko's mind that he could apply that maxim to himself: after all did he not increase his salary by 172% when he became president, one of the first decisions of his presidency? Of course not: as Louis XIV would have said, there are two sets of rules: one for me (summarized in that old principle that "the King can do no wrong") and another one for all other mortals.


Finally,  when France's most prestigious newspaper, Le Monde (our response to The New York Times), announced it was up for sale and bids started coming in, Sarkozy thought nothing of summoning the publisher to tell him that he was dead against a triumvirate made up of Bergé (Yves St-Laurent's partner) and two other businessmen buying the paper. Some of the President's advisers must have reminded him that Le Monde was an independent paper operating in a country with nominal  press freedom. He probably brushed their concerns away, convinced of his (God-given?) right to run the country like his personal possession. 


Have we degenerated to such an extent that we have become a banana republic (without the bananas) run by the latest avatar of Idi Amin Dada or Saddam Hussein? I was delighted to hear yesterday that Le Monde’s staff (who are entitled to choose the new owner) went straight for... exactly whom the President hated. There is hope after all. All it takes is a few courageous men to stand up to the bully-in-chief. A heartening message a few days before Bastille Day, I reflect looking at the column symbolizing the end of dictatorship on Place de la Bastille. We have doubtless come a long way - but there is still a long way to go.

When "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" becomes a Greek tragedy

PARIS
So now it's all about wicked speculators trying to destroy a small and virtuous country. At least that's the message that Greek Prime Minister Papandreou has been hammering these last days in his mini-world tour aiming at finding a solution to his country's financial travails. Excuse me, but there's nothing illegal about speculating, otherwise said speculators would already be in jail. Speculators stand to lose their shirts in their high-risk operations and, yes, this is how it works in a capitalist system: they also stand to make big bucks. But they only do so in exceptional circumstances such as a war or a particularly badly managed economy which is the case with Greece. After all, Greece does have a high budget deficit (12% and counting) and speculators had nothing to do with it. It's irresponsible Greek governments who, also adding accounting fraud to such skills, have driven the country to such dire straits. (By the way did you know that for the most part of the past 60 years the Hellenes have been run by either a Papandreou or a Constantinis? difficult to shirk your responsibilities then.)

Of course, both Merkel and Sarkozy professed they wouldn't let Greece down but at the same time the Germans have ruled out any bailout and sensibly so: why should a Teutonic taxpayer subsidize a Greek's pension or holidays? As for Sarkozy, his gesticulations are on a par with his usual behavior: they are aimed at self-aggrandizement ("Sarko the savior of the Eurozone") but also self-interest. He knows that sooner or later France will be in a similar situation: after all no French government has presented a balanced budget in the past 30 years - quite a feat. Even Germany after the colossal deficit induced by Reunification's costs (at least they had something to show for their deficit) managed to balance the books for a while, and Spain for several years in the 2000's ran a budget surplus. Sure their economy was prospering (not the case now) but the French government NEVER presents a balanced budget whether in lean or in fat years.

When will our leaders learn this simple truth: just like responsible family heads, no one can live beyond their means for ever. The day of reckoning is coming, has already come for some.

(This picture of the author was taken in the Greek islands in happier economic times)