Menton, France: Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) and Minister of the Interior, was anointed this week as the candidate of the mainstream right in the race for the French presidency this spring.
It is not often that a politician uses his position as the country’s top cop to run for the nation’s highest political office. But France after twenty-one nights of riots in the country’s great suburbs in the autumn of 2005 is not any country, and Nicolas Sarkozy is not just any politician.
Sarkozy is a man of almost unnatural energy with a single-minded focus on gaining power that is arresting, to use a neutral word. Scary and a little unbalanced are other words that come to mind. And that’s not just how people on the political left feel about him. Sarkozy has muscled a lot of people around in the mainstream right to get where he is today. Among those people is Jacques Chirac, the President of the Republic, whose policy of support for the admission of Turkey to the EU, was brusquely rejected in the UMP under the leadership of Sarkozy. Once close to Chirac, Sarkozy has become a rival. But Chirac’s desire to groom an alternative candidate to Sarkozy to replace him as president fizzled out. Alain Juppe, a former prime minister, had to be ruled out after he was found guilty in a corruption scandal. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, once highly popular as a result of his leadership of France’s opposition to the Iraq War, while he was foreign minister, lost his standing when he was unable to deal effectively with domestic social issues.
And that left Sarkozy , a master of the fine art of backlash politics, as the only game in town for the mainstream right.
Sarko, as he is called, lays claim to having reduced the overall rate of crime in France since he took the job of minister in charge of the police in 2002. (He had a brief stint as minister of finance between his two terms as minister of the interior.) He can point to statistics to back up this assertion. Over his years on the job, the overall crime rate has fallen by 9 per cent. The problem is that this decrease, which has been paralleled in most other countries in Europe, refers mostly to rates of theft, the stealing of automobiles, thefts in stores, and thefts in residences. While this problem has been decreasing, assaults against persons have been increasing---over the course of his time as minister, by 27.5 per cent.
While the decline in thefts, in particular auto thefts, helped along by tougher auto security systems, is welcome, the rise in physical assaults has made life more insecure in France, as well as in other parts of Europe, where the trend is also evident.
The fact that the French statistics for both thefts and violence against persons is closely paralleled in other European countries suggests that Sarkozy’s personal record as minister in charge of the police has not had much effect on what has happened, either for better or for worse.
The evidence shows that the greatest increase in the rate of violent crime has occurred in the suburban zones that have been the most socially precarious. For instance, in one of the most troubled of the Paris suburbs, Seine-Saint-Denis, the incidence of violent crime increased by 12.1 per cent from the end of 2005 to the end of 2006.
The trouble in Seine-Saint-Denis, and in other similar quartiers in France, is that it is home to a large population of young people, many of them of North African descent, mostly born in France, who don’t feel that they are accepted in this country and who have concluded that they have no hope for the future.
In his run for the presidency, that suits Nicolas Sarkozy just fine. Sarko knows that what really counts for him is not solving France’s violent crime problem, but keeping it on the minds of French voters. That’s how backlash politics works.
Sarkozy’s theory of policing dovetails nicely with this. He has shown little interest in increasing the number of cops on the beat in the toughest quartiers in France. Instead, he sends in the highly mobile CRS, France’s military-like tough-guy cops, when tension erupts. Moreover, the government of which he is a part, has done little to sponsor basic reforms to create hope among young people in the suburbs that they can share in the general well-being in this wealthy country.
Sarkozy has been able to convince a very large number of people in France that the trouble in the suburbs has to do with the immigrant background of the people there. He is hoping to ride that narrative into the Elysee Palace.
Whether he can do so will depend a lot on his major rival, Segolene Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate. Her great strength is her ability to talk plainly about job creation, education, and grappling with homelessness. She never fails to remind people that if there are seething problems in France, the political right has been in power for the past five years. If the French want change, they should look to her, she says, and not to the “top cop” who’s had his own way for far too long.
It is not often that a politician uses his position as the country’s top cop to run for the nation’s highest political office. But France after twenty-one nights of riots in the country’s great suburbs in the autumn of 2005 is not any country, and Nicolas Sarkozy is not just any politician.
Sarkozy is a man of almost unnatural energy with a single-minded focus on gaining power that is arresting, to use a neutral word. Scary and a little unbalanced are other words that come to mind. And that’s not just how people on the political left feel about him. Sarkozy has muscled a lot of people around in the mainstream right to get where he is today. Among those people is Jacques Chirac, the President of the Republic, whose policy of support for the admission of Turkey to the EU, was brusquely rejected in the UMP under the leadership of Sarkozy. Once close to Chirac, Sarkozy has become a rival. But Chirac’s desire to groom an alternative candidate to Sarkozy to replace him as president fizzled out. Alain Juppe, a former prime minister, had to be ruled out after he was found guilty in a corruption scandal. French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, once highly popular as a result of his leadership of France’s opposition to the Iraq War, while he was foreign minister, lost his standing when he was unable to deal effectively with domestic social issues.
And that left Sarkozy , a master of the fine art of backlash politics, as the only game in town for the mainstream right.
Sarko, as he is called, lays claim to having reduced the overall rate of crime in France since he took the job of minister in charge of the police in 2002. (He had a brief stint as minister of finance between his two terms as minister of the interior.) He can point to statistics to back up this assertion. Over his years on the job, the overall crime rate has fallen by 9 per cent. The problem is that this decrease, which has been paralleled in most other countries in Europe, refers mostly to rates of theft, the stealing of automobiles, thefts in stores, and thefts in residences. While this problem has been decreasing, assaults against persons have been increasing---over the course of his time as minister, by 27.5 per cent.
While the decline in thefts, in particular auto thefts, helped along by tougher auto security systems, is welcome, the rise in physical assaults has made life more insecure in France, as well as in other parts of Europe, where the trend is also evident.
The fact that the French statistics for both thefts and violence against persons is closely paralleled in other European countries suggests that Sarkozy’s personal record as minister in charge of the police has not had much effect on what has happened, either for better or for worse.
The evidence shows that the greatest increase in the rate of violent crime has occurred in the suburban zones that have been the most socially precarious. For instance, in one of the most troubled of the Paris suburbs, Seine-Saint-Denis, the incidence of violent crime increased by 12.1 per cent from the end of 2005 to the end of 2006.
The trouble in Seine-Saint-Denis, and in other similar quartiers in France, is that it is home to a large population of young people, many of them of North African descent, mostly born in France, who don’t feel that they are accepted in this country and who have concluded that they have no hope for the future.
In his run for the presidency, that suits Nicolas Sarkozy just fine. Sarko knows that what really counts for him is not solving France’s violent crime problem, but keeping it on the minds of French voters. That’s how backlash politics works.
Sarkozy’s theory of policing dovetails nicely with this. He has shown little interest in increasing the number of cops on the beat in the toughest quartiers in France. Instead, he sends in the highly mobile CRS, France’s military-like tough-guy cops, when tension erupts. Moreover, the government of which he is a part, has done little to sponsor basic reforms to create hope among young people in the suburbs that they can share in the general well-being in this wealthy country.
Sarkozy has been able to convince a very large number of people in France that the trouble in the suburbs has to do with the immigrant background of the people there. He is hoping to ride that narrative into the Elysee Palace.
Whether he can do so will depend a lot on his major rival, Segolene Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate. Her great strength is her ability to talk plainly about job creation, education, and grappling with homelessness. She never fails to remind people that if there are seething problems in France, the political right has been in power for the past five years. If the French want change, they should look to her, she says, and not to the “top cop” who’s had his own way for far too long.
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