By a margin of 53.06% to 46.94%, Nicolas Sarkozy and his Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UPM) won the Presidency of France yesterday over Socialist Candidate Segolene Royal.
To sum up the reaction of this page in one word: merdre. For all the inclusive rhetoric in Sarkozy's victory speech, his politics amount to little more than Front National Leger or Le Petit LePen. While TV5's coverage was somewhat more muted, the talking heads across the channel at the BBC could hardly contain their glee that both pillars of the European Union, Germany and France, are in the hands of free-market ideologues committed to smashing the welfare state and won't go out of their way to embarrass the Bush Administration the way their predecessors did.
The theme of the day was Sarkozy's program would create some unhappiness, but French society would play along. By "unhappiness", the pundits mean that workers, students, immigrants and other visible minorities will be disenfranchised and made to pay for the inflated sense of "crisis" which has permeated France over the past couple of years. "French society" means French corporations like Sodexho, who will now get to practice their special brand of exploitation (see: front-line health care workers, British Columbia) at home.
Cut taxes and slash vital programs, attack the Unions, and when all else fails, blame the Muslims: it's the same idiotic Bush & Blair movie again, but this time with subtitles.
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