A year ago on 6th May 2012 François Hollande won the French presidential election and took office nine days later. Having won the election partly because of his 'Mr Normal' image, the president’s method of governing the country has since attracted heavy criticism from all quarters, including from inside his own party. To mark the anniversary of Hollande's victory Stéphane Alliès analyses the powerful influences that have shaped the president’s approach to power and finds that they can be traced back to the day he was voted in as Socialist Party boss at Dijon a decade ago.
While the number of people living in poverty in France rises, and the standard of living for the vast majority of the population has either fallen or stagnated, a minority of the richest income earners have become better off, according to the latest study of ‘Household income and wealth’ published this week by the French national institute of statistics and economic studies, INSEE. Martine Orange analyses the grim figures.
President François Hollande has announced tough new measures to help 'clean up' public life in France following the Cahuzac affair. There will be a new body to oversee politicians' financial assets, more staff to tackle tax fraud and a promised war on international tax havens. However, as Lénaïg Bredoux reports, the proposals have been met not just with predictable disapproval from the opposition, but with dismay from some sections of his own Socialist Party too.
The latest twists in the Cahuzac affair show that money, when it becomes an end in itself, is like crime in its desire to escape the law. Here Mediapart republishes an article by Editor-in-Chief Edwy Plenel in which he sets out how tax evasion has become a colossal and institutionalised business at the centre of the economy. Fighting it has never been more urgent, he argues, yet little effort - if any - is being made to prevent it or to sanction those who are bleeding society of vital resources.
As Mali begins its slow process of reconstruction, the country's political elites are already preparing for a presidential election in July. Western observers say this election is an essential step in Mali's attempts to find stability. But, as Thomas Cantaloube reports from the capital Bamako, those same observers also fear that the elections will come too soon for the new and younger breed of emerging politicians that the country so desperately needs. And that the old self-serving elites may find themselves back in power.
While Jérôme Cahuzac has admitted to holding secret foreign bank accounts, after four months of vehement denials, there remain many unanswered questions. Just how many foreign accounts did he hold and where? How many other people, and who, were helped in tax avoidance by Cahuzac's personal financial advisors? Why did the tax authorities refuse to investigate Cahuzac? Fabrice Arfi reports.
The Socialist Party candidate was eliminated in the first round of a parliamentary by-election, the president is at historic lows in the opinion polls and government is weak. At the same time President Hollande is confusing his message and his priorities. All this adds up, says Mediapart editor François Bonnet, to a looming major crisis between the government and its voters on the Left.
When he was a candidate for the presidency, François Hollande promised to create a French system of government that would be beyond reproach. Earlier this week the president took his first steps to achieve that with the announcement of four laws to change the French Constitution. Yet there has been as much attention on the measures left out of the reforms as on what has been included. For example, there is no end to the president's immunity from prosecution while in office. Lénaïg Bredoux and Michel Deléan explain that the president has only backed those laws he is sure will get passed.
The US detention camp of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba continues to hold 166 prisoners, of which some 100 are officially regarded as ready for release. But many of these remain trapped within the camp because returning them to their countries of origin is considered by the US as too risky either for security reasons or for their personal safety. Algerian national Nabil Hadjarab, 32, (pictured) is one of those. His situation could be resolved if he were released to France, where he was raised and where his family reside and are ready to look after him. But, writes Mediapart international affairs specialist Thomas Cantaloube, Hadjarab’s freedom is blocked by the French authorities who continue to ignore appeals for his transfer and who, by doing so, contribute to the status quo at the highly controversial camp that President Barack Obama promised, in vain, he would close.
François Hollande has acknowledged economic reality by accepting that France can no longer meet its goal of cutting its budget deficit to 3% of GDP this year. In doing so he is abandoning one of his key campaign pledges, and he is now preparing to bring his economic policy squarely into line with that of most other European countries, which inevitably raises the spectre of the infamous 'structural reforms'. Are their parallels with President Mitterrand's notorious economic U-turn in 1983? Martine Orange reports.
