Soon the people of France will elect their new leader. The first round of the Presidential election will begin on the 22nd of April, if no candidate is not majoritarily elected after this first part, a second round will take place on the 6th of May. As to inform those who are un-informed about how France is governed, every five years French people elect a new President. The last election was held in 2007, N.Sarkozy, UMP was elected at 53.06% against the first French female who ever went so far in French election history: S.Royal Leader of the French left Party in 2007: Parti Socialiste.
As a free democracy, anyone from the two sides of the hemicycle who gathers over 500 signatures can challenge the election. The French are always torn between two consequent political parties. On the right with UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire renamed so by J.Chirac in 2002, President from 1995 to 2007) and on the left with the Parti Socialiste, led this year by F.Hollande.
The French economic situation is enduring one of the hardest time since the Second World War.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president has been good and bad for many reasons.
The World Crisis started in 2008, the whole world did not expect to live such hard times. Financially ruined societies which shut down, people losing their only sources of income. It spread all over the world and was soon to be in Europe and France. People did not notice it the first few months, they started to endure the consequences of the global crisis in 2009 and 2010. The world had no choice but to react.
[The French crisis is still on. France lost the third A from Standards and Poors in January "A downgrade could automatically require some investment funds to sell bonds of affected states, making those countries' borrowing costs rise still further"interview from CNBC of John Wraith, Fixed Income Strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.]
France eventhough it is down succeeded not to be too much damaged and thanks to Sarkozy, France has now a better status in Europe than ever.
Sarkozy is similar as a ship captain who can only handle his people in hard times. He is far from being a patient man, he is pro-active, he cannot prevent himself from moving and he always needs to be everywhere and I think he likes difficulties. He and A.Merkel work on getting Europe back on its feet.
Their policy is simple: austerity measures. Greece, Italy, France, Austria have to make an effort and reduce their expence. In my opinion, government should control banks in a better way in order to ask less to the peoples of Europe and not ask them to make up for the mistakes of only a few men.
On the other hand and eventhough some problems appeared before his first mandat, it feels as if everything while he was the President has been emphasized.
The gap between social classes widened under Sarkozy. The middle social class crushed under amounts of taxes. A working family composed of two adults and three children, who used to live well is now unable to pay their bills, they cannot pay the heater and stay in their appartment almost dying out of cold if they can still allow themselves to pay for a decent place to live in. Some are left in their cars with nothing to left.
The Crisis is the main poverty componant but not only. Here are the number of "Les resto du Coeur" organisation which help people in need. They provide free food to the most needy mainly during winter but also during the whole year to make sure they can help and follow families as well as help some people to find a new work or motivate them.
The numbers in 2000 was of 55 000 meals served on a whole year. Nowadays, numbers doubled, more than a thousand meals have been given to unfortunate people, this shows the pauperization of the country. Most of French people say that being from the middle class means that they pay for the poor and because they are considered as too rich to have any money from the government, they do not have any help, they work just the same as before but something happened". So what did happen?
Sarkozy and the others because of their policy left all the big companies abandon the French floor.
Factories left the country for East European countries or Spain because it is to expensive to pay an employee and to produce in France (Peugeot, Renault …).
China and India became the new productive countries attracting thousand companies to work there. Every profession that the middle class had in France are now over those countries.
Sarkozy made a promise to the French people during the presidential campaign: that no one would be left aside, that he would lower the unemployement average to 5%, in 2011 the rate is at 9.4%, the Crisis is still here but it does not explain everything, what happened ?
Sarkozy wanted to be the man of every situations. When he was minister of the interior under J.Chirac from 2002 till 2007, he showed that he was the biggest policeman of France. He went to the outskirts of Paris and said he would wash the bad people from there, how can a politican man say that?
[For years governments have been trying to assimilate people comming from abroad to France, without any success, but the problem does not come from the 70's, De Gaulle made it so, thinking that the people we brought in our country to build it up back were only going to stay a year or so and then go back to where they are from ...
We cannot possibly rebuild the world now, but we can try and fix it, respect of the other, acknowledge each cultures starting at school. Someone who has never had the chance to live abroad as a foreigner cannot understand how it feels, of course efforts have to be done on both sides, by learning the language and get involved in the society you live in.]
Racism has increased because of Sarkozy, numbers comming from organisation against racism clearly show it: 49% of the French people asked in 2010 think that foreigners benefit of any help comming from the government. Every problem that French society has is either because of the muslim part of France, Jewish or Black community. It is easy to focus on a group and highlight them, this way, we do not need to see what is the real problem and we do not try to solve it. But any mistake a person of this group will do, it will be emphasized times ten. We had rebellions in Lyon in October 2010 and then in other part of France. No this was not fair to break everything around and just show the population that all of what sarkozy said was right. But isn't there some kind of problem in the French society ? Why is the foreign youth that exasperated that they want to break everything ? They are forgotten by the French government.
Sarkozy is an old fashion catholic man, there is no new real ideas comming from him. He is just going on, he keeps doing what has been done for over thirty years but the world has changed, people have changed too. Generation from the 60's changed the french society and we cannot just forget it. Sarkozy is a stubborn man, he wants to follow the American system.
Sarkozy worships the American dream. He first declared his friendship to the United Stated of America in the first speech he gave the evening of his election "I want to confirm our friendship to the American people and that they can be sure we will by their side". For five years, he built up a new system based on the American one. Every social rights the country had for over thirty years, he slowly removed them.
He said he would never change the 35 hours of work a week but by launching this famous moto "Work more to earn more". This worked for private companies and non-governmental ones, but for people working for the government such as nurses, policemen, teachers … Working more did not make any difference in the end of the month. Most of those people found that unfair and went to work in private hospital or schools to earn more. This leads to privatisation of every public services. Does it mean that now going to hospital when they really need it going to be completely out of price, or does it mean that if they want good teachers for their children they will need to pay private schools, does this mean that government service is to deteriorate?
France is now part of Nato, organisation that we had left in 1966 because De Gaulle thought we were not part of the conflict between the USA and the USSR. We never wanted, before Sarkozy to join it, why to join it ? Sarkozy wanted to prove to the world that France is not dead, that it can still fight and that it is still a country that can take part in major war decision. De Gaulle did not want to be submitted to the USA and take part in wars where France should not be such as Afghanistan.
But it seems as if Sarkozy likes to be a sheep and follow. Sarkozy as a tiny man makes a big inferiority complex, he is like the frog that would like to be bigger than the bull.
Sarkozy made it clear during his campaign in 2007, he wanted to reform French system. The main idea of Sarkozy is that to save money, we had to save it thanks to the public services such as Safety, Education and Healthcare.
Safety is one of Sarkozy' word. He used it a lot, but he forgot to mention that in some part of France and because of his suppression of 100 384 policemen in between 2004 and 2012 completely raised the insecurity in the countryside or in the city's outskirts. For a Conservative man, he did worse than socialist in the 80's. How can just a little amout of men handle a whole country, knowing that the government is always more and more demanding. It is of course leading to stress and over reaction.
As the president, all of what Sarkozy did is suppress work in the country: more than 66 000 teachers were not replaced after they retired. Less and less teachers so the students average is not as good as before and the level of literate children is lower and lower and the expectations did not change if they did not raised. How can a child possibly learn everything in such a short lapse of time? With so many pupils in a classroom ?
Same goes for Health care. At least 70 000 health workers have not been replace when retiring. Making the patients and their family worry about the quality of the service. To be a nurse implies a social work where you need to take time to talk to the people you are taking care of. To answer their question, comfort them when they are afraid, if there is too much work and not enough nurses how are they supposed to take care of those people in pain.
With Sarkozy all of what France has known is restriction restriction and restriction ... Yes, it is needed. But, when you see that the president has been buying a private jet for 23,4 million euros, that for five years he has been everywhere in France spending tones of money each time he was in South of France or anywhere he though he was needed.
There has been restriction but not for everybody, the government needs to change.
When a European deputy is not going to the parliament he is still paid, what for ? Indeed they are here to serve the people and make our lives fair and useful but if they are just corrupted men then we should get rid of them, if someone works in a supermarcket and only comes once in while, what would the boss do? Just fire him, we cannot waste money, but the government is !
A president should be in his office and not moving all the time, he has not been listenning to the French he has been out of breath all the time. To make a good work, you have to make one thing after another, and not all at the same time, hence why we have ministers. Gould we say Sarkozy was our Little Napoleon III of modern times ?
N.B: This article has been written far before the election took place and I did not know yet who was to be after N.Sarkozy.
Also, my dear friend will recognise himself when reading this, I am sorry for all the English grammar mistakes I made and did not correct ...
