Being in France at the time of the legislative elections last week acted as a stark reminder of what is missing in our polity here in Macao: good reasons to hope for the best and not only dream of it. Allow me to clarify.
In this first round to elect legislators held on June 10th, French citizens were basically being asked about the kind of politics they would like their government to engage into for the next five years, bearing in mind that France, like most countries in Europe, has been confronted with daunting economic difficulties over the past four years. These elections are taking place one month after a new President, François Hollande, a socialist, has been himself elected against the incumbent head of state, Nicolas Sarkozy, a right-winger, and they seem set on sending a left-wing majority to France’s lower assembly, although short of an unstoppable pink-and-red wave — confirmation of the new majority will be secured on the evening of the second round, on June 17th.
Among the many reasons why Nicolas Sarkozy was defeated a month ago, his authoritarian, bling-bling and hectic style — or lack thereof— played for sure a crucial role, but it is no doubt his inability to restore economic growth while concurrently allowing for inequalities to reach unprecedented levels since the nineteenth century that brought about his downfall, and all the rhetoric about the risks of changing the captain in the midst of the storm was proven wrong. To my own eyes, and even though I am myself more left-leaning, Nicolas Sarkozy’s policies ultimately conflicted with the core values of his own political tradition: instead of strengthening the idea of an organic national community, division was brought to the fore; efficiency was constantly undermined by frantic changes of orientation that never accommodated appropriate time to bear fruits; and if change (“rupture” as we say in French, meaning breaking away from certain practices and customs) was to be at the center of all politics, it ultimately failed to find its raison d’être thus confirming the African proverb than “when you do not know where you are heading to, you should remember where you are coming from.”
Looking now at the legislative elections, the republican right-wing party registered in last Sunday’s first round its lowest score ever (less than 35%) since 1958, therefore confirming the wish for change expressed one month ago. Yet, only 57% of the registered voters did go to polling stations, a turnout that is as well a record-low in the past fifty years and indicates the prevalence of a wait-and-see posture. Now, the National Front, a far-right authority-prone xenophobic political movement has managed to capture some 13.7% of the vote, running on a political platform in which advocacy of protectionism and fear of globalization play the key roles. In this context, the tasks ahead for the new socialist government are formidable: France is the second biggest economy in Europe, but if inflation runs at less than 2.3%, unemployment has now climbed to 10%, economic growth only reached 1.7% last year, public debt hit 85.8% of GDP and public deficit, although receding, 5.2% of GDP — a far cry from Europe’s golden rules. If austerity measures seem to be out of the question in the short run, it seems obvious that public action will only be made possible by increasing revenues (the tax-to-GDP ratio in France is already the 7th highest in Europe) as well as becoming more cost-effective.
Economic efficiency, social fairness and overall sustainability of the whole system are at stake. To put it short, the requirement is to move away from quantitative growth to qualitative nurturing at a time of great upheavals. Being deprived of making that choice through an electoral process clearly would have run the risk of getting neither efficiency nor fairness, or at least, to be less idealistic, missing an opportunity to give a trustworthy try at both.
Published in Macau Daily Times, June 14 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment