Crisis reveals character. The French, a creative, artistic, and
— by their own account — intelligent people, are not at their
best in times that require steady nerves. The country’s costly,
self-imposed crisis over pension reform reveals, once again, the
flawed French character at its spiteful, wrongheaded worst. Ever
skilled at Jesuitical mental dexterity to justify shooting
themselves in the foot, they just can’t resist the pleasure of
saying non to authority.
During their centuries of absolute monarchy they developed
the habit of submission to the royal whim. To counterbalance that
they would occasionally rise in revolt, then return to passive
acceptance. Any suggestion of change was assumed to be bad; the
default response was non. In the 1970s an exasperated
prime minister despairingly called his country “the blocked
society.” The late political philosopher Raymond Aron lamented that
instead of evolution there were sporadic explosions of mass
discontent, followed by more socio-economic gridlock.
This past week has seen France’s fourth crippling national
strike and seventh day of violent street protests against the
government’s reform proposals. Labor unions have paralyzed much of
train service and other public transport, along with half the
flights at Orly airport and a third at Roissy. (They often block
airport access roads, making luggage-laden passengers trudge
hundreds of yards to the terminal.) Riot police in RoboCop body
armor grapple with hooligans spoiling for a fight; some 3,000 have
been arrested so far, dozens of police officers injured. School
children, egged on by their leftist teachers and mouthing labor
union slogans, join the joyful chaos. (One group of apprentice
Robespierres in short pants raided a bakery to steal bonbons.)
University campuses are beginning to rumble, raising the specter of
another May 1968.
On orders from the largest French labor union, the
communist-backed CGT, workers in oil refineries and ports have
taken a strangle hold on energy supplies. Ten of the country’s 11
active refineries are blocked, along with many of its 219 fuel
depots, while dockers refuse to offload oil tankers. Some 3,000 gas
stations have run dry. Tons of rotting, uncollected garbage pile up
in major cities like Nantes and Marseilles. Tens of thousands of
businesses have been hit by the transport disruption and lack of
fuel. The national railways have been losing $26 million a day, the
chemical industry $130 million.
Object of this mass hysteria? An attempt to save France’s
pension system by gradually, timidly raising the minimum retirement
age from 60 to 62 and increasing by one year the contributions to
it. (It had long been age 65 until Socialist President François
Mitterrand, for purely ideological reasons, made it 60 in the early
1980s.) In Europe, Germany, Britain and Italy (Italy!) passed
similar measures without trauma. Britain went further last week,
with the steepest public spending cuts in over 60 years, curtailing
welfare benefits, eliminating nearly half a million public sector
jobs, raising consumption taxes. As one amazed French commentator
sputtered in disbelief, “The British are being pragmatic, not
ideological. They’re trying to find ways to make the plans work
instead of blocking them.”
It should have been a piece of cake, simply moving France
into line with other industrialized nations. Public opinion and the
unions initially understood and favored pension reform. But Nicolas
Sarkozy’s government botched it by taking an uncompromising, my way
or the highway line, preventing the unions and Socialist Party
opposition from the usual face-saving motions. Now the unions are
trying to get back in front of their extremist members, announcing
more strikes and demonstrations next Thursday and in early
November.
With this costly standoff Sarkozy has painted himself into
a corner because of his hidden agenda. He wants to appear tough on
debt reduction to be a convincing head of the G20 and G8 when
France’s presidency starts in a few months, a platform he hopes to
use to raise his international stature and boost his standing in
France. And if he backs down, as his mentor Jacques Chirac did in
1995 on similar pension reform, he loses street cred as he prepares
his run for re-election in 2012. With his numbers in the basement
at around 26 percent, he sees this fight as essential to his
comeback. As one of his UMP party propagandists brags, “this guy’s
got balls.”
Nice in some circumstances, but in politics not always
enough. Today the strikes and demos are as much about him and his
personal style as about pension reform: the lavish lifestyle, the
supermodel third wife, the upcoming presidential jet designed to
rival Air Force One, the perception that he panders to the rich.
Despite the inconvenience, a majority of the population supports
the strikers. For all his gonadial prowess, the tone-deaf Sarkozy
seems to have reckoned without the French character and their
perverse pleasure in saying non.
