Sarkozy - New Leader in France

I do not usually post political articles however it seems, even to me, that the result of the election in France could have major implications throughout the world.

Here are a couple excerpts from conservative blogger, Cranmer on Sarkozy, the newly elected President of France.

The new Président de la République inherits from Jacques Chirac stagnant wages, a lagging economy, and pockets of civil unrest in the impoverished suburbs populated largely by immigrants. Some of these immigrant youths rioted and torched cars very recently, mainly in protest at their poverty and alienation. Monsieur Sarkozy referred to them as ‘scum’, and has pledged himself to be tough on immigration, to cut taxes and unemployment, to limit the disruption to public services during strikes, to cut public sector staff – in short, to abandon the French model and perform the radical surgery necessary for France to compete in a global market.

Setting aside his ‘Thatcher with trousers’ agenda, the election of Monsieur Sarkozy is a very significant development for two main reasons. Unlike most of the French ruling class, Monsieur Sarkozy is not an énarque – he did not go to the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. He is the son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother of Greek Jewish origin, and was baptised a Roman Catholic. He will be the first son of an immigrant to rule modern France, and he intends to do it his way.

He has voiced consistent opposition to Turkey's bid to join the European Union, and the Turks have just had their European dreams ended for as long as Monsieur Sarkozy occupies the Elysée Palace. It is not merely his disapproval of the imminent involvement of the military to reassert Turkey’s secularism, but he has a profound distaste for ‘political Islam’, which he perceives to be antithetical to the founding principles of the Fifth Republic. He also intends to scupper any notion that France will be the recipient of Muslim-Turkish migrant workers, and would doubtless invoke the amended French Constitution to do so.

Monsieur Sarkozy has come to power declaring: ‘I am not in favour of any kind of censorship, whether of men, ideas or religions’.