The news for our pals l'Escroc and Vile Pin gets worse and worse. Beginning with their record low popularity - now at 17% and 20% respectively - and as Yahoo also reported yesterday: 61% des internautes jugent que le pays n'est actuellement gouverné par "personne" (61% of internet users believe that the countriy is not actually governed by anyone). Although I didn't contribute to that survey you can count me in as part of that 61%.
But this is just the minor stuff. In the Clearstream affair we now have 2 developments. Firstly "le Corbeau" - Vile Pin's pal Gergorin - has been placed under judicial examination - which basically means he has been charged with certain crimes namely: "faux, usage de faux et dénonciation calomnieuse" (forgery, use of forgery and libelous denounciation). Secondly Imad Lahoud has been officially questioned by police. Lahoud is believed to be the co-conspirator with Gergorin and, via his father, has links with l'Escroc, however he denies having hacked Clearstream or having provided anything ever to Gergorin. The wheels of French justice do seem to be grinding slowly but it looks like they are gradually getting to the heart of the matter and removing one skin of lies after another.
In other corruption news a number of socialist politicians were found guilty in a case about fictitious employees at the mutual insurance company MNEF. This is a scandal that took place in the Mitterand era where certain pols received salaries at MNEF for doing nothing.
In EU-related news - a group of anchovy fishermen in the Basque south west of France are bitching about the EU's CFP rules and blockading their port and stopping any of the larger "industrial" fishing trawlers leave. I have considerable sympathy for these fisherman because, as usual, the EU regulations are part of the problem not part of the solution, but it is precisely the sort of thing that EUrophiles like l'Escroc prefer to ignore because it tarnishes their grand illusions.
Going back to l'Escroc. His bright idea of cancelling the Whitmonday holiday to pay for stuff to stop a repeat of the heat-wave deaths of 2003 has never been exactly popular. Last year's implementation was mixed and this year seems to be worse with all sorts of alternatives being proposed and a number of groups deciding to strike and take the holiday anyway. The 61% of "Internautes" look to be right about who isn't governing.
In riot news: Ségolène Royal caused waves in her own party (and outside) by calling for rioters to be locked up. Internally surely the funniest response has been that of her hubby Francois Hollande who seems to have been completely suprised by her statement - as Paris Link notes this must have led to an interesting dinner table discussion last night chez Royal-Hollande. I think the best summary of the shock this caused outside the socialist party is this Delize cartoon with Sarko saying "But she's scary" and Le Pen complaining that everyone is taking his policies.
I think that to the extent that they pay attention to politcs the rioters are probably as shocked as anyone. Until recently the centre-left of French politics was about as craven as it was possible to be with the standard response to anything being "Society is to blame, the government must apologise and then shower money on the problem".
Blog Home : June 2006 : Permalink
