Source: http://www.paitabaana.com/images/shit-happens.gifNicolas Sarkozy: Winning the Chance to Prove His Critics Wrong, NYT May 6.
“Never in this country will a Sarkozy be president of the republic. For that, you have to go to the United States.” (Paul Sarkozy, Mr. Sarkozy’s father, in the weekly news magazine Le Point in 1999.) - Many (more than 15 mio voters) would have loved his father for being right in this prediction. Alas 18 Mio voters thought differently and made him president of the "Grande Nation" yesterday night.
Paris, 6th of May 2007. The presidential election is over. The result as expected. Horrifying! In the New York Times a few words describing the "new" man are listed: "arrogant, brutal, an authoritarian demagogue, a "perfect Iago".
Arrogant he is and proved it the minute the results were presented. When listening to his speech at his party's headquarters in salle Gaveau one could have thought he was elected president of the whole wide world. This means, he presented himself as a man who was going, not only to change France but also the rest of the world. He spoke about Africa, the US, Global Warming and the European Union. Now the time has come where he has to show what he can do and how he will do it without provoking civil unrest. Actually, he was in government for quite some years in the past as minister of finance and minister of the interior. Somehow, however, he managed to run for presidency without being made responsible for the governments’ (he participated in more than one government…) politics. He was not made responsible for the situation France is in today, not for the economic situation, not for the every day aggravating social problems. He was made president because of his strong oratory skills and because he convinced 53.1% of the voters in the runoff election that he would bring change, higher purchasing power, stability, security and position France as a strong nation in the globalizing world. He promised to re-establish national pride (I didn’t know that the French had lost their pride in the Nation though…)
The brutality Sarkozy is associated with only needs a few words of explanation. When it comes to petty crime (Article, May 2nd about Petty Crime on another Blog) in the banlieues he said a few years ago, he will “clean out” those troubled neighbourhoods and repatriate illegal immigrant. His anti-immigrant, pro France rhetoric was so strong that he managed to collect 60% of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s (FN – Front National, extreme right) votes from the first round of elections. This fact is even more astonishing regarding the fact that Le Pen called to boycott the runoff election. Anyway, these threats by Nicolas Sarkozy ended up in weeks of arson and riots (Brandlegung und Aufruhr) across the country. Again, Sarkozy managed to profit out of the situation by taking the lead in quelling the unrest (Unruhen ersticken lassen/ to quell – bezwingen) while others were unsure of what to do. So much for now about Nicolas Sarkozy: The man who will govern France for the next 5 years; the man who will not hesitate to confront his adversaries; the man who will bring France greater social inequality.
No comments:
Post a Comment