May 8, 2012
La Fete de la Liberation
V-E Day

Today is a national holiday in France. France celebrates the end of the Second World War today as La Fete de la Liberation. The difficulties of the aftermath of the war notwithstanding, women gained the right to vote (in 1947), and Les Trente Glorieuses --the period of prosperity from 1945-1975 began, raising French living standards across the social classes.

In 2012 it is merely another opportunity to enjoy a long holiday weekend. Many people took yesterday off, to have a personally designed long weekend, a technique known as a "bridge". (--It is also popular in Spain, my next stop.) Civil servants use one of their personal days to give themselves an unbroken series of days off, amounting to more than half the week taken as a paid holiday.

However, with anxieties about the election's effect on the economy mounting, the French are tightening their belts, driving less, making only absolutely necessary trips by car. The Euro traded at its lowest level in three years during the trading session yesterday, closing at $1.30 from $1.29 earlier in the day. When I began my trip, the Euro was at $1.31. The reason seems to be a negative reaction to the results of Sunday's French presidential election.

The French economize significantly already: minutrie timers to keep electricity costs down are ubiquitous. This, in a country where electricity is cheap, being derived from nuclear energy. Like most Europeans, the French do not own clothes dryers, drying clothes on lines. The French also frequently do not have hot water in their offices and restaurants, also to keep heating costs down. I visited a mortgage broker in a posh area in Nice earlier this week: when I asked to use the ladies' room, the broker, a young and beautifully groomed woman, apologized for not being able to offer me hot water to wash my hands. The office did not want to pay to heat water. Supermarket bags are not given out, they have to be purchased. At the post office, when you buy stamps, you are lucky if the clerk gives you an envelope.

As for famed French chic, that is strictly restricted to those with the wherewithal to buy beautiful clothes, have their hair and nails done, along with the beauty treatments for which France is justly famous. In Marseille I saw a woman wearing a shower cap as a rain bonnet, and even in Nice, a more bourgeois city, no one among the locals I have seen has stood out for their style, even at the Sarkozy rally at the Palais de la Mediterranee. In fact, I would say the person with the most chic I have seen throughout my month in France has to be Francois Fillon, the Prime Minister, whose tenue (the French word for "outfit"), should, of course, stand out from the crowd.

The French have an expression --more used among the working classes and Front Nationale supporters, Mourir entre les siens --to die among one's own. Remembering Pascal Szymezak's comments about how little the French like to leave their home ground, how much they dislike change, I wonder whether if the economic crisis here continues, the French will continue, each one in his own town or village, to tighten their belts further and dig in, or as Jean Thouvet of Besancon told me, come September, after the summer holidays, assemble to protest in the streets. In the Ancien Regime,as the period before the 1789 regime is know, the French tightened their belts under the burden of heavy taxes like the taille, the land tax per family from which the nobles and the clergy were exempt. Anger at the unfairness of the taxes was a major rallying point for those who wished to overthrow the monarchy.

As this is France, major public demonstrations have the psychological sanction of French revolutionary tradition behind them. Nicolas Sarkozy was proud to say that in the five years of his quinquennat, there were no major strikes, no major incidents of public unrest. The pressures Francois Hollande will face when he takes office on May 15 will be to mollify the hard left that suported him, while preparing for the legislative elections June 10 and June 17. All 577 seats in the Assemblee Nationale will be contested, so depending on whether Hollande's party, the Parti Socialiste, or the Union Pour Un Mouvement Populaire -- the party of Nicolas Sarkozy, wins, France could have a legislature supportive of Hollande's policies or opposed to them. In the latter case, whether Hollande can move Sarkozy's forces his way by his powers of persuasion will be put to the test. The French call this divided government cohabitation. The last time it happened, in 1997, when Lionel Jospin of the Socialist Party was Prime Minister to Jacques Chirac, President and leader of the party to the right, it paved the way for Jospin's defeat in the first round in the 2002 campaign for the Presidency, and the emergence of Jean-Marie Le Pen as Chirac's challenger. Chirac won the election overwhelmingly,with Socialist voters casting "anti Le Pen votes", rather than "pro-Chirac" ones. Jospin announced his retirement from politics immediately after.

For Francois Fillon, if the UMP does not win a majority in the legislative elections, it will probably be the end of his political career. If he succeeds in winning a majority, he stands a good chance of winning the leadership race and being picked as Prime Minister by Hollande --cohabitation, and a possible Presiential run in 2017.