Nice
upends French politics
Previous
solidarity in wake of terrorism disappears as presidential contenders
stake out positions.
By
Pierre Briançon
7/18/16, 6:14 PM CET
PARIS — They all
insist they would never, ever use such a tragedy for petty political
purposes.
Then the criticism
starts. For the first time since the recent string of terror attacks
started in France in 2012, the country’s political solidarity in
the face of the ISIL threat has broken down. Conservative opposition
leaders are now directly taking the Socialist government to task for
not doing enough to prevent such atrocities.
French voters agree
with them. Also for the first time, they have lost faith in the
ability of French President François Hollande and his government to
deal with terrorism. That’s a fundamental shift in public opinion
that pollsters and politicians alike say will be a major determinant
of the French presidential election next year.
Two-thirds of the
French don’t trust the government to fight terrorism, according to
an IFOP poll published Monday in Le Figaro. Compare that to the
reaction after the January and November 2015 attacks, when a majority
of the population approved Hollande’s reaction and saw him as a
president who dealt with terror threats effectively. His popularity,
low as it was, surged on a “national unity” reflex.
Now the hostility is
becoming vocal. On Monday French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was
booed in Nice after a minute’s silence in honor of the attack
victims, as cries of “Resignation!” could be heard from the
crowd.
Jérôme Fourquet,
the IFOP pollster who directed the terrorism survey, cited several
reasons behind what his team predicted would be “the third attack
syndrome,” a feeling among the French electorate that enough is
enough.
“The number of
victims, the fact that there were children, that it happened during
the festive Bastille Day celebration, all of this reinforces the
emotional charge of the Nice events,” he said.
Add to this that the
attack happened in a French province — “so it’s not ‘just in
Paris’ anymore” — and the perpetrator’s use of a “mad truck
signaling a limitless imagination on the part of terrorists,” and
you get a politically explosive combination, Fourquet said.
The message hasn’t
been lost on opposition politicians, who are also no longer keeping
silent. Ten months before the presidential election, the electoral
campaign has started in earnest — even in the heart of summer, when
most of France is on holiday and politicians usually go silent.
The government finds
itself attacked on two grounds: the specific circumstances of the
Nice attacks; and its apparent inability to draw lessons from what
happened in 2015.
The Right piles on
Alain Juppé was the
first out of the gate. The veteran French politician and former prime
minister, who is slightly ahead of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy in
the conservative primary race, said on radio the day after the attack
in Nice that “if all the measures had been taken, the drama
wouldn’t have happened.”
French candidate for
right-wing party Les Republicains, Alain Juppe, on July 18, 2016
French candidate for
right-wing party Les Republicains, Alain Juppe, on July 18, 2016 |
Tobias Schwartz/AFP via Getty Images
But he was quickly
overtaken by Christian Estrosi, the conservative president of the
Provence region and former mayor of Nice, who has become “the
government’s first critic,” as Le Monde put it.
Estrosi — who
defeated far-right National Front rising star Marion Maréchal-Le Pen
in the regional council election a month after the November 2015
Paris attacks — has accused the government of not providing the
police reinforcement he had been requesting for weeks. Estrosi even
said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve “lied” about the number
of policemen that were present Thursday night on the Promenade des
Anglais.
Sarkozy, who was on
holiday last week and whose only previous reaction to the attack had
been on Twitter and in a short written statement, came back from his
summer retreat Sunday night to appear on television and pile on the
criticism. The government “hasn’t done everything that could have
been done in the last 18 months,” he said.
Naturally, the
government couldn’t remain silent, so Valls and Cazeneuve put out a
lengthy joint statement Sunday night. “No [French] government ever
did as much in the fight against terrorism,” they said. They
offered a long list of measures taken by the government — including
a few demanded in recent days by opposition leaders that are already
being implemented.
Sarkozy, for
example, suggested in his TV interview that consulting jihad-linked
websites should be made a criminal offence – which Valls and
Cazeneuve reminded him has been the case since June.
As for Hollande, all
his public statements since Friday have been of the predictable kind,
calling for “national unity” and seeking to reassure the French
that “France is a strong country,” as he has already said several
times.
The problem for the
French president and his government, however, is that they are caught
in a losing battle that is not so much about specifics as about style
and confidence.
“People simply
have trouble trusting a president who announces at 1 p.m. that he
will lift the state of emergency and then has to come at 3 a.m. in
the morning to say it will be extended after all,” said Fourquet
from IFOP. “You may think that the state of emergency is not the
problem — after all Nice happened while it was still on — but
voters don’t reason that way. They want someone they feel is in
charge at the top. In those moments they want a commander-in-chief.”
Furthermore,
Fourquet said, “Valls keeps repeating that we have to be ready for
other attacks, that there will be other innocent victims. That may
have worked in previous cases. Not any more. People don’t want a
government who tells them that such dramas are unavoidable.”
The mood at the top
is clear and was best summed up by a depressed Hollande adviser.
“With each new terror attack, [Hollande’s] credibility is taking
a hit, whatever we do. Meanwhile all the guys on the Right fight each
other to out-Le-Pen Le Pen,” he said, referring to National Front
leader Marine Le Pen, who has urged the government to aim for the
“total eradication of Islamic fundamentalism.”
French far-right
Front National party President and member of the European Parliament
Marine Le Pen
French far-right
Front National party President and member of the European Parliament
Marine Le Pen | Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images
‘Outrageous
proposals’
Criticism of the
government is also one way for conservative primary candidates to
demonstrate to their hardcore electorate that they’re the toughest
of the lot. A Juppé adviser acknowledged that was his candidate’s
prime motivation in coming out swinging so soon after the truck
attack in Nice.
“You know that
Sarkozy will come up with outrageous proposals that will make him
look like a real tough guy, so you want to stake early the position
of the reasonable leader who is firm against the government but won’t
be drawn into a pissing contest with Sarko,” he said.
The positioning on
the Right is important, because the conservative primary is looking
more and more like the real contest for the presidential election —
which could happen if Hollande loses all hope of making it to the
second round of voting because of perceived haplessness in dealing
with France’s terrorist threat.
The anger towards
Hollande, however, might not necessarily hurt the chances of another
Socialist candidate next year.
Fourquet said the
whole French political debate has moved to the right on security
issues — with the state of emergency, warrant-less administrative
house searches, clampdowns on freedom of speech for radical Islam
sympathizers, all happening under a Socialist government.
So even if it is
plausible that Le Pen might get a bump in the polls, that wouldn’t
automatically translate into electoral victory for her, Fourquet
said.
Last year, in the
regional election that took place one month after the November
attacks, the Socialists weren’t trounced as expected and held some
of their positions, while the National Front failed to gain control
of any French region.
But voters’
reactions after Nice highlight the problem: To win on a law and order
campaign the Socialists won’t be able to rely on Hollande.
His dilemma was
summed up by conservative French MEP Arnaud Danjean in a tweet last
Friday: “It’s not easy to explain that what reassures (i.e. state
of emergency) is not what protects best.”
Hollande may try his
best at reassuring, but he doesn’t look to the French like the man
who can protect them.
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