Y ahora qué? les invito a dar una vuelta conmigo por el mundo de las palabras:
Forget Who’ll Win in France. Change Is a Loser.
The candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal, each promised to remake France, deploring the joblessness, the bloated bureaucracy, the lack of entrepreneurial spirit. Mr. Sarkozy has proposed something approaching the Thatcher revolution, while Ms. Royal even suggested scrapping the Fifth Republic. But all that talk ignored two realities:First, life in France is, on the whole, plenty comfortable. The French flirt with the idea of change, but few in the mainstream want to risk losing France’s “exceptionalism” — that warm bed of traditions and entitlements that lets so many enjoy the benefits of living here
Mr. Sarkozy promised pension reforms and limits on unions’ ability to strike. Already, the most critical union federations are warning him to expect people in the streets if he tries to push through either change. “Radical change in an authoritarian manner will lead to a situation of blockage,” said Michel Grignard, national secretary of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor. French unions are strong in part because the right to strike is written into the Constitution.
And then there is the French love of their vacations. Siga leyendo
Así que los franceses están «apoltronados». Pues van a tener en Sarkozy un Presidente «incómodo»:
This will hurt
President Sarkozy is not going to be the sort of man who goes soft and gives up his bold plans once he finally enters office. He will be determined to shake up the French economy, in particular by abolishing the 35-hour week, by finding other ways to make labour markets work more flexibly, and by cutting taxes wherever he can. He will be much likelier to tough out the opposition of the street than have been any of his recent predecessors. But to do that, he will seek other means by which to rally support. Essentially, that is likely to mean nationalism. Siga leyendo
Pues vamos a desearle suerte, que la va a necesitar:
Bon courage, Sarko. You are going to need it
The most lamentable aspect about the manifestly miserable Chirac tenure is that in the past five years he has controlled everything in the manner that De Gaulle envisaged the head of state should – and he has done nothing with the resources at his disposal. On the night in 2002 that he crushed Jean Marie Le Pen and his right-wing National Front by 82 to 18 per cent I wrote a piece on these pages headlined “Chirac wins big, but it will mean so very little”. “Very little” turned out to be an overestimate of Mr Chirac’s achievements.
Which is why Mr Sarkozy matters so much at this moment. His victory will be followed swiftly by a parliamentary ballot that should break the taboo of almost 30 years and permit the centre-right majority in that place to be returned to office. In the aftermath of Ms Royal’s defeat the Socialist Party will return to what it does best, tearing itself to bits. The slogan Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité was plainly coined by the French Left out of irony. Siga leyendo
Es Sarkozy liberal? (una visión desde la izquierda patria):
Victoria del “neoliberalismo salvaje” en Francia
Pero hay algunas medidas que estoy seguro harán las delicias de los liberales españoles. Sus medidas en agricultura, por ejemplo, son muy ilustrativas: apoyar la pesca francesa a nivel internacional regulando la práctica de la pesca industrial o su plan de restructuración del sector vitícola para “reconquistar” las partes de mercado mundial perdidas. Pero son aún mejores las que tienen que ver con Europa: suprimir los fondos estructurales para los países que practican el “dumping social o fiscal”, reforzar el rol de los representantes europeos para influenciar la política monetaria del banco central europeo, garantizar el principio de “preferencia comunitaria” para permitir a las empresas europeas consolidar su posición y lanzarse hacia la conquista (¡!) del mercado mundial. O otras perlas de su programa como dar créditos públicos a toda persona que tengan un “proyecto empresarial coherente” (y yo que creía que esto en economía de mercado lo hacían los bancos…).
Nicolas Sarkozy comparte la creencia común en Francia de que fabricar productos es mucho mejor que diseñarlos, venderlos o hacer los controles de calidad y que hay que proteger a las empresas como si se tratara de un patrimonio nacional. La concepción de la economía de Sarkozy, el liberal, es fundamentalmente mercantilista y colbertista: grandes empresas nacionales, grandes indicadores macroeconómicos, todo ello chutado con los fondos públicos. Su programa, se parece mucho más al de Chávez que al de Margaret Thatcher, de hecho, ha sido evaluado casi como igual de costoso que el de la candidata socialista. En realidad, la política del gobierno socialista en España es infinitamente mas liberal que la que propone Sarkozy. Siga leyendo
