SHADOW-BOXING WITH ISLAM

PARIS. SarK.O. – meaning Sarkozy, political boxing champ, ‘knocked out.’ That’s how newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur’s cover nailed President Nicolas Sarkozy’s setback France’s first-round regional elections. The March 21 runoff election delivered the knockout punch. Though barely half those registered bothered to vote, they handed left-wing opposition groups 21 of 22 regions in continental (“Metropolitan”) France.
Even many Frenchmen have no idea what regional councils do. These are much less than law-making Canadian provinces or even U.S. states. But they’re big spenders on key close-to-the-people issues: economic infrastructure and development, transportation, housing, environment, management of secondary schools, training and apprenticeships. To most voters, “real politics” means national or local politics. They see regional votes as a chance to send mid-term national signals -- a kick in the shins to the president of the republic and his government.
Hence the massive abstention rate. Many voters said: “Let’s wait until the 2012 presidential election to deal with Sarko.” But morally and in terms of Sarkozy’s agenda, Sunday was a big defeat for him. His spokesmen quickly admitted this. Especially on the national identity issue, which many partisans link to black and Arab immigration and refugees. “I’m not a racist,” a middle-class female Sarkozy voter told me Sunday, “but everybody knows that [immigrant] young people abuse social benefits and cause most petty crime. In some immigrant districts, we tax-paying French are grossly insulted.”
But so are immigrants. Even with one in 10 citizens being Muslim, France’s Senate and National Assembly are a sea of white faces. Of three Sarkozy Muslim ministers – all young females – one got fired, another demoted, the third marginalized. Of 36,000 municipalties, the number of non-traditional mayors is virtually zero. A new Paris History of Immigration Museum draws almost nobody.
Politicians raise inter-ethnic tensions by condemning imagined assaults on traditional culture. Weirdly during a 2009 speech on the world financial crisis, Sarkozy injected the hot-button burqa issue, saying that face-covering clothing – “a sign of subservience" was “an unwelcome sight in France”.
Last November, he gambled that a vast public consultation might keep a focus on vote-getting ethno-cultural fears. Tellingly, this proposal came from Éric Besson, his Minister of Immigration, Integration, National identity and Solidarity – surely a title in search of a theme. The theme turned out to be the favourite hobby-horse of 81-year-old Jean-Marie Le Pen’s neo-fascist Front National (FN) party: coloured and/or Muslim arrivals are wrecking the France of Joan of Arc, church-steeples and Camembert.
The consultation bombed, and Sarkozy shut it down after three months. But the damage was done. By inviting everybody to vent, he drove many of his own supporters to Le Pen, France’s politician with the best syntax and the worst ideas. A startling rise in FN support to over nine percent nationally (including old Le Pen’s personal Riviera-region rise to almost 23 percent) shows that France’s xenophobic demons are uncaged.
Now Le Pen’s attractive 41-year-old blonde daughter Marine is poised to inherit his mantle. She is a far less scary version of her old shoot-from-the-hip dad who called Hitler’s Auschwitz ovens an historical “detail.” She will likely nibble off even more Sarkozy defectors.
Naturally, voters found countless reasons to dismiss Sarkozy. France’s ever- ideological left-wing hates him just for talking about reform, free enterprise and leftist featherbedding. His bourgeois UMP partisans recall his early presidential “bling-bling” vulgarities: flashy Rolex watches, text-messaging while meeting the Pope, his weekend-magazine love life, and hanging out with billionaires.
Other supporters never forgave him for not really backing free enterprise – but clinging to old statist interventions to rescue failing “national-champion” companies. Now they fear he’ll back down on deficit control and pension reform. Most fear he can’t cure France’s over 10 percent unemployment – more than double that among youth, more than triple among immigrant youth.
Now Sarkozy faces a squeeze between French voters demanding social relief and his strategic partner, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, demanding belt-tightening. A recent summit on a possible Euro-zone rescue of debt-burdened Greece may launch a dress rehearsal for a foreigner-bashing Sarko-Le Pen stand-off -- with big-spender leftists winning. Don’t count on sophisticated arguments from either side. Le Pen is a genius at picking scabs off national sores by sly insinuation and fake amazement at adversaries’ lack of game-changing solutions. And Sarko shines at stealing adversaries’ ideas and allies.
But how pathetic to hear one of Sarkozy’s cleverest supporters pandering on Sunday’s TV post-mortem to Le Pen’s fear-mongering. UMP parliamentary leader Jean-François Copé, barely touching disastrous deficits, pensions and agriculture, emphasized: “We must get back to fundamentals.” Example: his bill to ban face-covering Islamic veils.
A Freudian slip about getting back to fundamentalism? Remember Le Lepen’s classic putdown of copycats: “Beware of imitations. Vote for the real thing, me.” Sarkozy is not knocked out. But his supposed shoo-in for the 2012 presidency now looks like a horse-race. Or shadow-boxing with Islamic rules?