Certainly, Nicolas Sarkozy is changing. It would be futile to deny it. However, it seems he has waited too long to do so, and the French, increasingly bogged down in the evident erosion of their purchasing power, hold it against him. According to a recent survey conducted by IFOP/Le Journal du Dimanche, 79% of them believe that in one year of presidency, the actions of the head of state have not improved the situation in the country.
After the image, the substance. After the form, the content. Supported by the lessons learned from the municipal elections, the multiplication and acceleration of reforms, predictable since their announcement by the head of state last January, should have served as a bounce back and a pivotal moment in presidential action. This is far from being the case. Despite being grouped under the label “general review of public policies,” the feeling widely prevails that recent government announcements are categorical, not to say scattered. Whether it’s a failure in design or in communication, the fact remains that the French additionally struggle to make sense of it when they listen to the many spokespersons – the government’s and the three from the UMP – each commenting in their own way and style on the planned decisions.
Symbolic, if anything, of this convoluted situation in which “the reforms” find themselves, is an edition of Le Monde dated April 19, 2008. In fact, three symbols in one. The first of them, this particular edition since it occurs, historically significant from a statistical point of view, after a second day of strike by the daily in the same week: precisely due to the “reforms” of the title founded by Hubert Beuve-Méry, following the announcement by the newspaper’s management of the elimination of 130 positions, including 89 in the editorial staff. In the same edition, the President of the Republic, the second symbol, speaks directly in its pages about the necessary “refoundation of social democracy”, calling again for a “reform” of trade unionism, questioning the criteria for funding and representativity, which he considers outdated. As if wanting to take the French as witnesses – and to place the unions in an awkward position – Nicolas Sarkozy mentions this “deal” made as soon as he came to power with the trade union forces: either the social partners take the files themselves and negotiate among themselves, or the state makes decisions in their place. While the President is expected to speak on television in the coming days, should this specific article be seen as further proof of an Elysian difficulty in communicating through usual means?
Finally, and as an echo to this intervention, Le Monde simultaneously publishes – the third symbol – the interventions of the debate jointly organized on April 14, 2008, by TNS-Sofres on the theme “reforming France, mission impossible?”. A sadly enlightening read, the remarks of the speakers – Jacques Attali, the academic Philippe Corcuff, Minister Xavier Bertrand, and the first Secretary of the PS François Hollande – show, under the guise of a purring consensus on the need for reform, the unbridgeable gap between experts and politicians. They also confirm doubts about the courage to undertake the necessary steps to achieve it. Not to mention the irreducible need of these political leaders to distinguish themselves from each other, if not to take refuge in a broadly sterile political discourse. To the “urgency to reform” mentioned by Jacques Attali, Minister Xavier Bertrand tempers with the phrases “respect for time, pedagogy, and consultation”. To Philippe Corcuff’s invitation to “bring imagination into politics,” François Hollande responds that he “spent several years winning Corrèze for the left,” concerned that one might eliminate the department.
Under these circumstances, one can only understand the weariness that is gradually overtaking the French. Forty years after May ’68, it is especially to be hoped that they do not become bored.
