RFI is not responsible for the content of external websites. The year-old decided not to seek re-election in December, bowing to the catastrophic approval ratings that showed just four percent of the population approved of him at one point.
His five-year term has been marked by a series of terror attacks, stubbornly high unemployment and revelations about his private life that saw him photographed cheating on his partner in January Although 70 percent of respondents told pollster Odoxo they viewed him as a bad president, the survey of 1, people taken at the start of April showed parts of his legacy are seen positively.
The poor man looks so exhausted; he has no authority on his unruly government. Manuel Valls, the current dashing and firm interior minister, would as prime minister stir passions and wake France up. Can Alastair Campbell please help? If Sarkozy was a master dazzler, leaving us no time to rest between announcements of eye-catching new measures, Hollande seems unable to present his actions in clear and effective terms.
We don't see him much and when he speaks out, we're not convinced. This is probably the saddest thing. If he's still charming and warm in private, with us, his people, he feels he needs to act out a part.
We don't see him eat, drink and be merry, he doesn't humour us anymore, he even walks strangely, as stiff as a broom. Many of us hoped he would be able to soothe our national anxiety, which reached alarming levels after five years of Sarkozy paroxysm.
For the second time in his short career as a Socialist MP, Bachelay defied his own party leadership over the contested El Khomri law, joining fellow lawmakers who vowed to vote against the measure and oppose the undemocratic manoeuvre that bypassed parliament. The standoff between PM Valls and the frondeurs over the labour reform intensified, with the mutinous Socialist lawmakers going as far as to orchestrate a no confidence vote against the premier. In the seaside city of Nice, a man drove a truck through a crowd gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks, killing 86 people and wounding around others.
Nearing the midway point of his mandate, Hollande told an interviewer he would forego a re-election bid if his government failed to turn a corner on massive unemployment.
The jobless rate stood just above 10 percent at the time. From that point on the suspense around his conditional candidacy grew, like a rising, collective itch the president refused to scratch.
Finally, in December , he solemnly announced he would not run for a second term, another first for a modern French president. He would step aside not because of the jobs situation, which he argued was improving, but because his candidacy had created too many divisions within the political left.
His job approval rating tanked to a historic low of 11 percent. Whatever the cause, the Hollande era now had an expiration date. Rather, it was a chronic failure to connect with ordinary people that condemned his presidency. They could never figure out who the real Hollande was. His advisors implored him to change, to show some emotion, to get angry, to express some feeling, but he refused. Raffy believes over the past six decades French people have come to expect a sense of familiarity from their president.
Merkel may be too distracted by the troubles in Ukraine to help out in France, however. But it is hard to see how the open split in the French left can do anything but increase the pressure on Merkel to recognize that austerity has not achieved the desired results and may now be exerting a substantial drag on Germany's hitherto unstoppable economic engine: German GDP declined by 0.
France's parochial troubles may then be merely the latest indication that a deep-seated European crisis continues to simmer and may boil over at any moment. Fortify your mind! Join the Prospect today. Support The American Prospect 's independent, nonprofit journalism by becoming a member today. You will stay engaged with the best and brightest political and public policy reporting and analyses, and help keep this website free from paywalls and open for all to read. Our membership levels offer a range of perks including an opt-in to receive the print magazine by mail.
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