French Right’s primary elections

Vive le conservatisme

By Vassiliki Leredde

For the first time in French history the French right and centre right held the first round of primary elections for choosing their candidate for next April’s presidential elections. Four million people from every political side went to the polls last Sunday, signed a declaration of faith to the right and payed 2 euros each for voting mainly for Francois Fillon, a former prime minister. The polls outcome was surprising. No one had predicted Mr Fillon’s victory by 43.3% of votes, instead it was that of Mr Juppé that everyone waited for. As for Mr Sarkozy, the former president who was one of the contenders got 23,7% of votes. Shortly after Mr Sarkozy, accused the journalists of have been unjust with him. Without Mr Sarkozy there was more place for the winner Mr Fillon and his main rival Mr Juppé, another former prime minister under Mr Chirac’s administration that got 26,2% of votes.

Mr Fillon’s program is very conservative suggesting  namely “the reinforcement of France’s catholic identity and the French state’s authority”, a close alliance with Mr Putin and Mr Bassar el Assad, but also the suppression of the 35 hours week, the layoff of 500.000 civil servants and the liberalization of the economy.

The French are not very enthusiastic about Mr Fillon’s program because they see it as not only very conservative but also too liberal, recalling that of Mr Sarkozy. But time goes on and after the Brexit and the Donald Trump votes, Mr Fillon’s candidacy will be either the extreme right’s rival or the reason why the extreme right will gain power.

 

 

The end results of the French right’s primaries  

By Vassiliki Leredde

 François Fillon won the French right’s primaries by an astonishing 66.5% over 33.5% for his rival Alain Juppé. The majority of Mr Fillon’s votes comes from the bourgeoisie and the catholic conservatives. Given that Mr Fillon plans to lay off 500.000 civil servants if elected president next April, strikes have already started. Mr Fillon has been accused over the past of embracing Mr Sarkozy’s ideas but this time his program is only a light reminder of Mr Sarkozy’s one, whom Mr Fillon served as prime minister from 2007 to 2012.The current exceptionality of Mr Fillon lies to the fact that he talks about religion and Frenchness but also about free market and free enterprise. He wants for France big reforms and tough measures in order to avoid state bankruptcy. Finally, the victory of the conservative candidate marks a big change in global trend. If Brexit and Donald Trump votes have been the popular votes, François Fillon vote is the elites’ vote.

 

 

Not everyone in Europe agrees on Donald Trump

A   very controversial new leader

By Vassiliki Leredde

Starting from France where being a politician is not a question of personal charisma but of education, the election of Mr. Trump is an unwanted event. For most of Europeans Mr. Trump is a risk prone and tough business man who has nothing to do with the so much needed stability and flexibility of political institutions. Officially, no one in the old continent could vote for him, except maybe from the desperate Greeks who would be very happy to see a new figure in their political scene. In Germany there are people happy to see him elected and others that are afraid of him, including Mrs. Merkel. The UK is more practical minded and sees in Mr.Trump a threat to old alliances and strategic positions. The Italians fed up with Mr. Renzi’s austerity politics would like to see someone as Mr. Trump in power in order to escape from the old establishment and have a more relaxed approach to political matters. For Eastern Europeans Mr. Trump is an exceptional political leader with a very sympathetic wife who loves very much her home country Slovenia. For Spaniards Mr. Trump is so unpredictable that he can’t be a good global figure while Portuguese prefer dealing with Mr. Obama. In Northern Europe, the Swedes are very much angry about the newly elected president because of a bad joke that Mr. Trump made during his campaign involving the shape of Sweden. At the opposite, the Norwegians are ready to work with him.

Would Europeans be ready to listen or not to Mr.Trump, no one could ever doubt of the new leader’s willingness to concentrate on American matters first.

 

 

A sad story

By Vassiliki Leredde

Greece has been the first European victim of the international financial crisis of 2007-2008 which came to be in Greece an immense government-debt crisis. When ex-prime minister Andreas Papandreou first declared in 2011 that the Greek debt wasn’t sustainable, he opened the doors to angry creditors who imposed the solution of extreme austerity measures in exchange for a bail out. Since then there have been bank closure, capital controls and 12 rounds of pension cuts, tax increases, layoffs and cuts in the health care and education systems. As a consequence of all this many Greeks lost their jobs or their revenue, great number of shops have been closed, and many people left abroad. The truth though is that not all of the new measures that the Greek authorities adopted under the pressure of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Union (the main creditors) have been bad. The Greek state has had the opportunity to modernize itself and to acquire the foundations of any other western country. Nonetheless the human cost of this is tremendous with many lives lost or thrown into poverty, firms that disappeared and young brains that fled abroad. If the tourist industry wasn’t so well developed and with great returns, the Greek state would had defaulted.  Mr. Tsipras, the anti-establishment candidate of the far left that became prime minister in in 2015 didn’t change much in the whole picture. Despite all his personal comments, while only candidate, on the cruelty of the austerity measures imposed by the creditors, he voted for all of them and used excessive police force against angry pensioners. Pensioners and working people have lost 40% of their income since the beginning of austerity measures while self-employed people like lawyers and doctors are the first to be squeezed by heavy taxation. There have been numerous reports that there is little heating in schools and no cotton or medicines in hospitals. The situation is really bad and the problem is that no one can be sure that it would be an end to it. Except maybe from Greek folk songs where a bad situation is always followed by good luck and happiness.