Francuska - predsednički izbori

Француска министарка: Не може Америка да нам намеће да купујемо Ф-35

Сједињене Америчке Државе не треба да намећу савезницима из НАТО-а оружје америчке производње под изговором атлантске солидарности, саопштила је министарка Оружаних снага Француске Флоранс Парли у интервјуу за лист „Журнал ди диманш“.
„Не сме се дозволити да се Члан 5 Устава НАТО-а (о колективној одбрани) под притиском Вашингтона претвори у ’члан Ф-35‘ (ловци-бомбардери које производи ’Локид Мартин‘) који би обавезивао државе НАТО-а да купују америчко наоружање“, нагласила је министарка уочи самита НАТО-а који ће бити одржан 3. и 4. децембра у Лондону.

Emmanuel Macron
@EmmanuelMacron
Qui est l'ennemi de l'OTAN ? La Russie n'est plus un ennemi. Elle reste une menace mais est aussi un partenaire sur certains sujets. Notre ennemi aujourd'hui : le terrorisme international, et en particulier le terrorisme islamiste.

Translated from French by
Who is the enemy of NATO? Russia is no longer an enemy. She remains a threat but is also a partner on certain topics. Our enemy today: international terrorism, especially Islamist terrorism.

7:07 PM · Dec 4, 2019·Twitter Web App

Macron booed and chased from a Theatre.#GiletsJaunes https://t.co/5mztEbVz2E

— Tappy Lappy (@tappylappy) January 18, 2020

French workers turn to sabotage as transport strike flags

PARIS (Reuters) - French energy workers protesting against President Emmanuel Macron's pension reform plans cut power to Paris' wholesale food market on Tuesday in the latest of a series of sabotage and wildcat actions as a weeks- long transport strike loses momentum.

The deliberate sabotage of power supplies underlines the determination of left-wing unions after a wave of strikes and street protests since early December failed to force Macron to back down.

The hard-left CGT union's energy branch said it was responsible for an early-morning power outage at Rungis, the world's largest wholesale fresh food market. The outage also briefly halted services on the Orlyval rail shuttle serving Orly, Paris's second-busiest airport.

In the past week, members of hardline unions have also twice entered the headquarters of the moderate CFDT union - which backs the key principles of Macron's pension reform - and cut power there and have blocked ports and refineries in a bid to force Macron's hand.

“Blockading certain sites, disrespecting the law by entering private property, and cutting power, all this is disrespecting democracy and the law, it must be sanctioned,” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said in parliament.

Protesters not linked to the unions also have scuffled with police at a Macron-organized investment conference near the Palace of Versailles and have tried to force their way into a theater where Macron attended a show with his wife.

On Saturday, the La Rotonde Paris restaurant where Macron celebrated his election victory in 2017 was set on fire in an arson attack that has not been claimed.

“Some who disagree with the government are encouraging violence. Like with the yellow vest protest, the far-left and far-right are regrouping for violent political action. This is extremely dangerous for democracy, ”Coralie Dubost, an MP for Macron's LREM party, said on BFM Television.

Just over a year ago, an increasingly violent yellow vest protest movement against fuel taxes and the high cost of living culminated in a weekend of looting and rioting in Paris, where dozens of cars were burned and official buildings vandalized.

After the government offered concessions on increasing the retirement age, a public transport strike has fizzled out and trains and metros are now largely back to normal.

Philippe plans to present the pension reform plan to his cabinet on Friday and to parliament in mid-February. The plan aims to simplify and balance France's generous pensions system, but unions say it will reduce workers' rights.

The reform is crucial for Macron's reform credentials and his chances for re-election in 2022.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-protests-pensions/french-workers-turn-to-sabotage-as- Transport-strike-flags-idUSKBN1ZK0TR eye = 0

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/french-president-emmanuel-macron-risks-it-all-a-9f463a02-de1b-4b3a-841b-d156c9ddfda6

...
France is no longer a united, solidary republic, says Jérome Fourquet, but a fragmented kingdom of islands, an archipelago of sorts. Fourquet works at IFOP, the oldest polling agency in France. It's his job to measure the nation's sensitivities with a sober eye. More than half of all French people still support the protesters, Fourquet says, and two-thirds are dissatisfied with Macron.

Last year, he published a best-selling book about his archipelago theory. Fourquet attributes the division of the country into "many small and some large islands" to the diminishing importance of Catholicism. In the past, it was the Catholics versus the secularists -- just two camps, and everyone's positions were clear. You were either religious or you weren't. You were on the left or the right. Now, however, there's also a geographical fragmentation. Elites, Fourquet says, tend to live in big cities, while those people who fear change usually live in the countryside.

This phenomenon can also be observed in other Western democracies. "But in a republic where the Jacobian principle of social cohesion is ingrained in the DNA, this development destabilizes us more than it does our neighbors," Fourquet says.

Macron promised to unify the French prior to his election. "But how can he do that when he's dealing with an archipelago?" Fourquet says, adding that Macron's demeanor and style of government had also widened the gap between those at the top and those at the bottom of society.

All of the small, arrogant utterances that marked the early days of Macron's tenure as president still hang over him to this day. Early on, he displayed a habit of admonishing and rebuking citizens who tried to speak with him. And he made it clear to everyone that he expected them to work more. Macron changed his manner of speaking long ago, but his words have not been forgotten.
...

kingdom of islands, an archipelago

KinderLad wrote:

kingdom of islands, an archipelago

imamo mi lepu nasu rec za to -

It’s France. It’s Macron’s stormtroopers vs Firefighters. The UK refuse to broadcast this so share as widely as possible. Show the world the chaos at the heart of the EU. pic.twitter.com/mocFgsm9SR

— David Vance (@DVATW) January 29, 2020

The More Macron Does, the More Unpopular He Gets

Unemployment is falling, investment is rising and transport strikes are easing. Yet France’s leader has all the hallmarks of a one-term president.

By Lionel Laurent
February 3, 2020, 9:52 AM GMT+1

“Remember when we all believed in Emmanuel Macron?” The question comes not from an angry trade unionist but a stand-up comedian in central Paris, facing a crowd of thirty-something urbanites cut from the same cloth as France’s 42-year-old president. A collective groan of “yes” rises from the audience, many of whom spent the winter struggling through transport strikes triggered by a flagship pension reform that crippled the city. Only one dismissive “no!” rings out. “There’s always one person who voted for Jean-Luc Melenchon,” the comedian shoots back, referring to a far-left leader who’s one of Macron’s most scathing critics.

While highly unscientific, the groan-o-meter fits with the bigger national picture for Macron, who seems to get less popular the more he achieves. The president’s approval ratings declined after his election in 2017 amid a flurry of reforms, and sank below 30% in late 2018, when the Gilets Jaunes protests that spawned from anger over plans to hike gasoline prices were at their peak. He’s still polling at around 25%, even after striking a compromise with France’s biggest trade union to ease the gridlock on public transport. Disappointment is now starting to seep into his core fan-base of young, urban professionals — the bloc bourgeois of center-left and center-right white-collar workers who are pro-reform and pro-EU. Paris, where Macron got 90% of votes in 2017, may well re-elect its Socialist mayor in March.

The barometer of anti-Macron feeling, ranging from quiet disillusionment to violent street protests and death threats against politicians, has little to do with economic performance or a failure to carry out reform pledges. The French economy grew 2.3% in 2017 and 1.7% in 2018; unemployment fell to a decade low in 2019; and business investment has rebounded. A surprise contraction in the fourth quarter of last year put annual growth in 2019 at 1.3%, but Barclays economist Francois Cabau expects that to be a one-off and is cautiously optimistic. The 91 reforms passed by the Macron administration and its ruling party, En Marche! (Onward!), should start to bear fruit soon. They have moderately or largely kept their promises 69% of the time, according to think-tank iFRAP.

Yet Macron has managed to lose the French people in the process. Some of it is personal: His star-pupil attitude, combining youthful arrogance and Jupiterian haughtiness, grates. Some of it is institutional: If Macron behaves like a monarchical, top-down ruler, it’s also because the Fifth Republic concentrates a lot of executive power in the presidency and has no mid-term elections to worry the ruling party in parliament. And some of it is political: The first-timers that stuff the ranks of Macron’s party got over-confident in long-term planning, completely underestimated the Yellow Vest movement and failed to do the groundwork necessary to negotiate pension reforms.

There’s also the changing nature of French society. Life is becoming less comfortable than it used to be, as Pierre Brechon of Sciences Po Grenoble puts it. Since 2000, several bells have tolled for the establishment: A rise in the far-right vote that almost won the presidency in 2002; a “ no” referendum vote on an EU constitutional treaty in 2005; and the respective failure of both Right and Left to win re-election in 2012 and 2017. Despite relatively low income inequality and a cradle-to-grave welfare state, France hasn’t stamped out divisions among socioeconomic and cultural lines, which author Jerome Fourquet says has created an “archipelago” of disparate social islands. The postwar era’s influences of Catholicism and communism are fading, traditional media is on the wane, and conspiracy theories like “chemtrails” and anti-vax arguments spread by social media are on the rise. Macron was a net beneficiary of this anti-elitist atmosphere in 2017, as a relative newcomer leading a new party. In 2020, he is on the receiving end.
 
Ambivalence now reigns supreme. Macron’s reform agenda was promoted as a soft, Scandinavian-style answer to France’s woes — now it’s viewed as harsh medicine that will leave winners and, more importantly, losers in its wake. True believers who think France has changed since 2017 and will change in the coming years are in the minority, between 30% and 40%. That doesn’t mean revolution is in the air. Support for the pension protests is split, while the proportion of people who defined themselves as Yellow Vests in late 2018 and early 2019 oscillated at 10%-20%. Either way, the pace of reform is likely to slow. Macron’s government has already given up budgetary rigor.


It’s still too early to write off Macron but, if recent history is any guide, this kind of unpopularity is almost impossible to reverse. The backlash against globalization and a lack of social mobility are powerful forces, as they are in Trump’s America and Brexit Britain. Whoever wins the presidential election in 2022 will either hit upon a new narrative that binds the Parisians of the bloc bourgeois to other parts of French society — maybe with a nod to the environment — or, as far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Melenchon and his far-left party France Unbowed are already doing, declare war on them entirely. 

dr. Labrador Špegelj wrote:Slaba izlaznost na lokalnim izborima, 18,5% do 12h. Na prošlim lokalnim je u ovo doba bilo oko 23%.