Nicolas Sarkozy’s much-touted reshuffle proves to be a small one that keeps the prime minister in place
Nov 18th 2010 | PARIS
If Mr Sarkozy was seeking to rebrand his government, he missed the mark. The reappointment of Mr Fillon, who is now expected to stay until the 2012 presidential election, is an almost unprecedented individual triumph. Under the Fifth Republic, French prime ministers have been treated as dispensable, to be sacked whenever things go badly. Just weeks ago, Mr Sarkozy argued in private that his old team was worn out and needed renewing. Mr Fillon, according to a friend, had even rented a new apartment in Paris. But Mr Sarkozy’s mistake was not to have a credible alternative. Given the prime minister’s greater popularity among voters and deputies, Mr Sarkozy risked trouble from having him outside the tent. By dithering, he has emerged weaker and Mr Fillon stronger.
Much of the rest of the new team is anything but. Out has gone the big-tent approach that embraced the left as well as the centre and lent Mr Sarkozy’s first government its originality. All but one of the six figures from the left have disappeared, including Bernard Kouchner, who was sacked as foreign minister. Out too went leading centrists, including Jean-Louis Borloo, the environment minister, and several liberals. Denied the prime minister’s job that he thought was within his grasp, Mr Borloo declined a lesser post and walked off in a huff.
The new government draws heavily on the old guard from the Gaullist RPR party founded by Jacques Chirac, which Mr Sarkozy broadened to the centre under the UMP umbrella for the 2007 presidential election. With the return of Alain Juppé, Mr Chirac’s prime minister in the mid-1990s, who takes over at defence, and the transfer of Michèle Alliot-Marie from justice to the foreign ministry, the new government has a chiraquien feel. François Baroin, another Chirac protégé, keeps his job as budget minister. Indeed, for a president who promised a rupture with the Chirac era, his new team would not look out of place under the old Gaullist. French satirists had a field day, as did the opposition. “So much fuss for so little!”, mocked Martine Aubry, the Socialist leader.
Mr Sarkozy, who appeared live on prime-time television this week, seems to want to accomplish three things with his narrower Gaullist line-up. One is to create a more cohesive team. Although the broad-based approach was arresting, it was blamed for confusing supporters on the right, as well as for personality clashes. One by one, left-wingers such as Jean-Pierre Jouyet, a former Europe minister, have quit. Most of the ethnic-minority faces have been dumped. Rachida Dati went last year; Rama Yade and Fadela Amara this time. Eric Woerth, a minister caught up in a party-financing judicial investigation linked to Liliane Bettencourt, the billionaire heiress to the L’Oréal cosmetics empire, has been fired. By tightening the team around his base, Mr Sarkozy may hope to thwart damaging scandals and rows and present a more unified front.
The second aim, which remains to be tested, is to return to a more traditional form of governing. Mr Sarkozy conceded that there should be a more balanced division of labour with his prime minister. His advisers are to appear less in public, leaving ministers to get on with their jobs. The president himself, studiously calm during his TV appearance, intends to stand back a bit. Jetting about during France’s presidency of the G20 will occupy a big chunk of his time. Laurent Joffrin, editor of Libération, a left-wing newspaper, called this a shift from baroque to classical: “sarkozysme without the excess”.
Third, and despite the chiraquien flavour of the new government, Mr Sarkozy wants to pursue structural reforms. Until recently, he was himself arguing for a pause. This week, by contrast, he said he wanted “to make all five years effective for France”. He announced a rethink of the tax system by next summer, based partly on Germany’s fiscal structure, and a new form of social security to finance care of the elderly. The idea is to make both budget-neutral. Mr Fillon is a good choice to make sure of this. He was a lone voice in 2007 when he declared that “France is bankrupt”. This week, he said that his “absolute priority” was still to trim the deficit.
Although the reappointment of Mr Fillon is popular, in the short run the reshuffle is unlikely to lift Mr Sarkozy’s approval ratings from their record lows. Voters do not seem to give him much credit for holding out through weeks of strikes and protests to lift the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62, although that may change in time. Some deputies still wonder, privately, if he is the best man to lead the French right into the 2012 election. One poll last week suggested that, in a presidential run-off, Mr Sarkozy would be beaten, albeit narrowly, by Ms Aubry—but that, if she faced Mr Fillon instead, he would be victorious.
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