On incompetence in (French) politics
I migrate to Slovakia on July 1st, for a 2-years mission, leaving my family in France, for such is the agreement that suits all. The round trips will therefore be almost weekly on SKY Europe, the young Slovak airline with Belgian capital that has now secured a handsome share of the central European market (what a dynamism!). At the time when France votes no to the European constitution, this is rather interesting. That will do me good to take some distance from our political French political class.
What complacency! What incompetence! What a waste!
All this muddle started with the man who has embodied the European constitution. Here is a man who took the liberty, when presenting the final draft of the European Constitution, to pepper his speech with personal comments about Turkey and the major risk it meant for Europe to accept Turkey as a member state - that of course without consulting anybody; the hundred of European personalities or so that had taken part in writing the constitution were hijacked and deceived. With hindsight, nothing could have been more effective to create a climate of mistrust around the European constitution. (By the way, what a late realisation of simple geographical facts; if Turkey "is not in Europe", supposing it mattered, wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to raise the matter sometime between 1974 and 1981? – that is during Mr Giscard d’Estaing tenure as French president.)
The story continues with the man who has governed us for ten years. Here is a man who continues his long series of clumsy political manoeuvres with their string of disastrous consequences. Here is a man who knows perfectly well that in the referendum tradition of the French 5th Republic, voters traditionally reply at the same to a lot of implicit questions, rather than to the one put on paper, the main one being a renewed endorsement of the President. Since François Mitterrand, with his typical brio and characteristic absence of any moral principle, put an end to the old-fashioned sense of honour cultivated by General de Gaulle, an electoral bashing, no matter how big, entails no consequence of any sort for the president. The referendum was therefore a low-risk plebiscite for the tenant of the Elysée palace, the only collateral victims being possibly France and Europe. If you doubt this, just look at the half smile on the president’s face in his televised address of May 29th: he is not that deeply affected by the results. (It is actually a well-timed purge in view of the 2007 presidential elections.)
The cherry on the cake was the ex-youngest prime minister "that I gave to France" as François Mitterrand once said. As someone who "wants Europe with all his forces" (so he said in his first speech as a prime minister), and as someone who sponsored the enlargement to Spain and Portugal, he carries a heavy responsibility in all the consequences of the “no” vote. Without the respectability and the credibility that he brought to the no campaign, without his insidious filibuster campaign and his disgraceful alliance with the neo-Fascists and neo-Trotskyites (they survive and even prosper in our archaic political landscape), without the personal involvement of this new Doctor Faust in search of power, the victory of the no would not have been possible.
How are these brilliant minds going to explain to the politicians from other European countries what France wants, and how will they obtain anything? The politicians of the other European countries – be they liberals or socialists - may not come out the elite ENA law school, some may even come from working class backgrounds and may have made their way up through the trade-union movement, but they are no fools, and they will know how to negotiate and get new concessions from France as price of her fickleness.
I am not dissatisfied to have to watch the coming episodes from an outside vantage point. And if Slovakia happens to have good common sense leaders, there might even be something to learn.
