by JACQUES SIMON
French President François Hollande surrounded by press in 2012 PHOTO/Parti socialiste/Flickr
François Hollande has hastened the French Socialist Party’s transformation into a vehicle for business interests
France’s Socialist Party (PS) government is being pummeled by criticism from the Right, the Left, and civil society more broadly. François Hollande’sgovernment’s approval ratings hover around 13 percent, making him the Fifth Republic’s least popular president.
Hollande’s response to this unpopularity has been a concerted move to the right, strengthening a tendency initiated in August 2014. Lately he and Prime Minister Manuel Valls have taken a more authoritarian turn, maneuvering to centralize power and muzzle contestation, much of which comes from their own party.
These moves may have dire consequences in the 2017 presidential election, paving the way to victory for the far-right National Front (FN).
Hollande’s Worst Enemy
The 2012 election broke a seventeen-year streak of right-wing presidents (in 2007, two-term president Jacques Chirac was replaced in the Élysée by fellow party member Nicolas Sarkozy) when the Socialist Party (PS) was elected as the head of state and shortly after granted a parliamentary majority.
François Hollande was elected on a message of change, hope, and renewal. His key campaign promises included a 75 percent tax rate on earnings over a million euros, as well as increased social security and benefits. He also promised, in a now-famous speech called the Discours du Bourget, to rein in his “worst enemy” — “the world of finance.”
Hollande was initially backed by a solid majority in the legislative assembly and appointed a strong and bold government. He invited members of the Green Party (EELV) to hold important ministry positions; half of his appointees were women (another key campaign promise); and he surrounded himself with confident, young left-wingers.
This hopeful beginning was burnished by an early win. Hollande passed the so-called “Loi Taubira” law (named after the charismatic justice minister) authorizing gay marriage and adoption despite a well-organized mass movement from the reactionary right. The executive victory strengthened his authority and credibility.
But Hollande’s effort to tackle the “world of finance” was less successful. Both the Right and the center-left (and according to polls a majority of French taxpayers) opposed his 75 percent “supertax.” The policy was referred to the Constitutional Council (France’s Supreme Constitutional Court) and was ultimately ruled an unlawful discrimination against the wealthy in late 2012.
The ruling was a blow for Hollande, who had made the policy a centerpiece of his campaign. Things got worse from there.
In December 2012, Mediapart, one of France’s most respected independent news sources, alleged that Jérôme Cahuzac, the junior minister for the budget, had illegal offshore bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore.
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