THERE WAS no mistaking who was the chief hate figure for up to three million people who participated in more than 200 demonstrations across France yesterday. “Sarkozy resign”, said placards at the Bastille in Paris.
In Toulouse, they staged the mock trial of King Sarkoval. In Nantes, protesters held a write-in of grievances, to begin a fictional procedure to remove Mr Sarkozy from office. An opinion poll conducted for Paris Match magazine found that 78 per cent of the French believe yesterday’s “day of action” was justified – including 53 per cent of supporters of Mr Sarkozy’s right-wing UMP party.
The eight trade unions who organised the marches and patchy strikes are demanding an increase in the minimum wage; an end to the government policy of tax-free overtime; a freeze on reductions in the civil service; government measures to preserve jobs and an end to Mr Sarkozy’s “fiscal shield”. The French leader reduced the maximum tax on France’s wealthiest citizens from 60 per cent to 50 per cent, at a cost of €458.3 million to the treasury last year.
The communist CGT estimated turnout for yesterday’s marches at three million, while the ministry of the interior set the figure at 1.2 million. In any case, the unions won their gamble because they surpassed mobilisation on January 29th. Demonstrators yesterday mentioned a third “day of action” if the government does not return to the negotiating table.
Because of a law on “continuity in public service” enacted by Mr Sarkozy, disruption to the transportation system is far less than it used to be on strike days. Ninety per cent of flights from Roissy airport were maintained yesterday; 70 per cent of flights from Orly.
On February 18th, Mr Sarkozy promised €2.6 billion in bonuses and tax relief for those hardest hit by the economic crisis. But the president escaped to the European Council in Brussels yesterday and left it to prime minister François Fillon to announce that the government was sticking to its economic policies.
On Wednesday afternoon, Mr Sarkozy made a surprise visit to a school which was attacked earlier this month by armed men wearing ski masks. The president’s announcement of a new plan against gang violence on the eve of the demonstrations was widely interpreted as an attempt to divert attention.
The only government concession in response to yesterday’s marches is to speed up the measures promised by Mr Sarkozy in February. All will take effect between April and July.
Last December, Mr Sarkozy announced a €26 billion recovery plan, creating the perception that he gave 10 times as much to companies and banks as to the French people. “Contrary to what you hear, it is not disquiet but indignation that makes French people descend into the street,” Laurent Joffrin wrote in Libération newspaper.
He compared Mr Sarkozy to Louis XVI for refusing to reconsider the “fiscal shield, which protects a thin layer of privileged people”. Alluding to France’s “culture of strikes”, the right-wing Le Figaro newspaper noted that France “prefers to march in the streets when things go badly, rather than seek negotiated solutions.”
As Raymond Soubie, Mr Sarkozy’s adviser for social affairs, noted on RTL radio station, “only” 100,000 French people lost their jobs in the last trimester of 2008, compared to 250,000 Spaniards and 1.3 million Americans.
Laurence Parisot, head of the employers’ federation MEDEF, was the other bête noire of demonstrators. Ms Parisot is resisting pressure from the government to ban bonuses for bosses who fire employees. She said yesterday’s strike was “costly in terms of demagoguery, in terms of illusions created”.
One of Ms Parisot’s best-known maxims is that “Life, health and love are precarious; why should employment be an exception to the rule?”
The crisis has accentuated the undertow of class warfare that runs just beneath the surface of French society. The director of the Continental tyre factory in l’Oise, north of Paris, was bombarded with eggs when he tried to speak to his employees about the closing of the factory. “We were all betrayed,” said Antonio da Costa, a trade unionist from the factory. The “Contis” had agreed to move from a 35- to a 39-hour working week without extra pay. All 1,120 have just lost their jobs.