Brewing French Whine – without Licence!

The French, who are no stranger to revolution, are up in arms at the moment: fuel depots are on the brink of running dry; schools are barricaded; activities at ports and airports are severely disrupted; flights are cancelled; cars abandoned along the stretches of motorways; mass protests break out all over France; rubbish remains uncollected in the cities.

There are all the essential ingredients for anarchy in France at present, as the nation goes through one of the most serious civil unrests in recent times.

The workers are angry at introducing a bill which was approved by the senate on Friday, to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62. With that, Nicolas Sarkozy, the embattled French president, at least won the first hurdle – just one of many - in his determined battle, to introduce far reaching reforms to the French pension scheme.

A Battle of Wills has broken out across France, when negotiators of both sides failed to reach an agreement on how to deal with the looming pension crisis. Both sides had actually agreed that something must be done; yet, have disagreed as to how it should be done.

It is no exaggeration that the troubles that we see now are the worst of that kind for 15 years. The scenes got uglier in Paris while Senators were debating the bill on Friday when the riot police used tear gas against the protesters. Up until then, the protests were more or less peaceful, but rather noisy.

The participation of school children in protest marches, made both the spectacle and relevance of strikes a bit funny, to the independent observers, as the former have a whole life before reaching that crucial age of retirement. Some school children made it clear that they have a right to protest on this issue!

The fierce optimists on President Sarkozy’s side believe that the protests will lose momentum in the next few days owing to the half-term holiday that school get at the beginning of next week: there will be no school children heading to schools; parents may be busy with holiday activities rather than taking parts in street protests. The union members, however, take a diametrically opposite view; they believe the protests will intensify when the French parliament takes up the bill for debate, which, is going to be short-lived.

President Sarkozy was not a very popular man in France, even before the current troubles. His approval ratings had been plummeting for some time. So, he knows that he can’t afford to be seen as incompetent too. That’s why he puts on a brave face in the face of the current unrest. “It is not troublemakers who will have the last word in a democracy,” he told his supporters when anger and frustration were mushrooming in major cities due to strikes.

Since neither side is prepared to back down, there are indications that the trouble will peak next week. It will coincide with the debate of the bill that has already been passed by the Senate. The process of it becoming law, is, quite appropriately known as being ‘guillotined’. Piles of rubbish, the threat of disease, the menace caused by rats and the scenario of fuel rationing might force both sides to reach a compromise; however, the rhetoric coming from both sides makes it much harder to achieve even at the eleventh hour.

The Labour movement in France is a real force to reckon with. Year 2010 was not the first time these reforms were introduced. During the past decade, there were two failures, when two successive governments tried to introduce them. President Sarkozy, while pointing his index finger at his election manifesto, tries to prove that he is not for turning. He may be a victor, especially in the face of his victory at the Senate, but is definitely going to be bruised, if not politically wounded.

Unions, quite rightly, fear that if the president is going to have his way, there will be more troubles in the offing against workers. The workers are not prepared to give up on their rights despite the economic realities on the ground, especially in the presence of an alarming fiscal deficit. They are aware of the fact that the pension scheme will collapse under its own weight unless the flaws are rectified as soon as practicable.

As this is the case, the centre-rightists of political spectrum blame the riots on the opposition parties, especially the Socialists. They deny they are spreading anarchy, yet support the rights of the workers to strike. If it continues for another week, French economy will be dealt a massive blow on many fronts; the tourism sector is already feeling the pinch. The governments are warning their citizens to stay away from France; the British government issued one on Saturday.

The troubles in French streets are going to repeat in other European capitals too, very soon, especially when austerity measures started biting. The British government also introduced tough measures this week to curb the deficit, which may result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs. The British and the French normally don’t see eye to eye on many issues for obvious historical reasons.

Whether the British workers and their French counterparts are on the same wavelength in their attitude towards austerity measures remains to be seen in the coming months.

- Asian Tribune -