Wed, Jun 01, 2005 page9

• Chirac gets rude awakening with `no' vote victory

  • DPA
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  Arrogance, an unpopular government and the inability of politicians to respond to the anxieties of a large segment of the population were among the reasons French voters soundly rejected the EU constitutional treaty in Sunday's referendum.

  President Jacques Chirac, Socialist Party head Francois Hollande and other mainstream supporters of the treaty awoke too late to the sea change that was taking place among the French regarding the treaty, and even after recognizing a problem failed to understand the challenge.

  Polls showed support for the constitution at more than 60 percent until mid-March, when European Commission President Jose Luis Barroso made a point of defending the union's determination to liberalize Europe's services sector.

  French workers suddenly began to fear that they could be competing for domestic jobs with Polish and Czech craftsmen -- working for Polish and Czech wages and Polish and Czech social security benefits.

  These fears took on flesh when a small French company laid off nine of its workers but said they could keep their jobs if they worked for the firm's subsidiary in Romania, at 110 euros (US$138) a month, or one-10th of their past salaries.

  A few weeks later, French media revealed that a sub-contractor of the state-owned telecommunications giant France Telecom had hired some 100 Portuguese workers to work in France at Portuguese wages.

  These events seemed to confirm the warnings of treaty opponents that the constitution was a Trojan Horse for free-market and business interests seeking to lower wages and erode France's generous social-welfare system.

  By the time Chirac finally managed to convince Brussels to drop the so-called Bolkestein directive on services, the damage had been done, with poll after poll showing that French sentiment had turned against the EU constitution.

  Yet, even in the two months of campaigning that followed, Chirac and other treaty proponents failed to address the issue except in vague terms. Instead, they continued to sell the political benefits of the constitution as well as the historic responsibility of the French.

  These arguments appealed to white-collar workers, entrepreneurs and urban residents, who were already supporters of the treaty, but failed to sway the blue-collar workers, farmers and left-wing voters who held the key to the referendum's success or failure.

  According to estimates based on exit polls, some 80 percent of blue-collar workers voted against the treaty. More than 60 percent of those under 25 rejected the constitution, France 2 television said.

  With unemployment at a five-year high and the long-promised economic turnaround still seemingly far off, those who felt particularly threatened by change sought to protect themselves and to send the government a clear message.

  Chirac too easily dismissed this part of the electorate as disloyal and, in a nationally televised appearance in May, criticized its adherents as being un-European, which proved to be a serious error in tactical judgement.

  "It was a mistake to say, `You cannot be European and vote no,'" the head of a French polling institute said, "because this showed that Chirac did not at all understand a segment of society."

  When the French president finally made a point of addressing these issues, in a nationally televised speech three days before the referendum, it was too late.

  Chirac also made a fatal error in underestimating the deep disaffection in France for him, his prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, and the policies of his government.

  In what many of his own advisors criticized as an act of misplaced loyalty, he kept Raffarin at his post despite the prime minister's many gaffes and deep unpopularity.

  Raffarin also proved to be a spectacularly ineffectual spokesman for the treaty, at one point declaring, "The only good `no' is a non-voting `no,'" an unhappy paraphrase of a quote by a 19th-century American general, who had said, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."

  Chirac advisors said bitterly that this was the first time in French history that a prime minister actually called on people to stay away from the polls.

  In addition, Chirac and other treaty proponents spun doomsday scenarios in case of a treaty rejection that were too melodramatic to be taken seriously.

  Here, too, Raffarin had an unhappy touch when he warned, just 10 days before the vote, that rejection of the constitution would usher in an economic crisis.

  "To hear that is seen as blackmail and has no basis in reality," an advisor to Chirac told the daily Le Monde. "The economic crisis has been here for quite some time."

  An advisor to the government, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the problem with Chirac's campaign for the treaty was that it sought "to destroy the no, rather than construct the yes."

  Finally, the absence of a real debate on the treaty until it became clear that it could be rejected made it appear as if leaders in Paris and Brussels were simply imposing the constitution and were expecting the usual rubber-stamp approval by voters.

  In that regard, this stinging rejection of the EU constitution should serve as a memorable lesson for European politicians.
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