France braced for a day of nationwide strikes yesterday and a potentially huge Paris protest aimed at pressing the government to better support workers during the economic crisis.
Paris police laid out two routes through the capital, rather than one, for the expected crowds. Unions called on employees in the public and private sectors to join in the strikes.
Schools, hospitals, the postal service and public transport were among the services expected to be hit. However, Paris transport authorities said they expected buses and Metro lines to be mostly spared, even if suburban trains were not.
Workers with the SNCF train authority began their strike at 8pm on Wednesday. The SNCF predicts major disruptions for fast trains as well as suburban Paris traffic.
In a rare move, police decided to open a second route to accommodate an overflow crowd during the march from the Place de la Republique to Place de la Nation in eastern Paris.
A strike in late January put between 1 million and 2.5 million people into French streets. Weeks later, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced measures to help people affected by the financial crisis, including special bonuses for the needy.
Sarkozy told ministers at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that he “understood the worries of the French,” but said he had no plans for additional measures.
French Budget Minister Eric Woerth said the measures already announced would increase social expenditures this year by nearly 10 billion euros (US$13 billion).
Two hundred protest marches were planned yesterday around France, said the powerful CGT union, which has members in various sectors of the economy.
‘THE PRINCESS OF CLEVES’
Meanwhile, Sarkozy has often been ridiculed for being the first French president to prefer jogging to literature. Now his complaints about how much he hated one of France’s landmark historic novels has inadvertently sparked a cult phenomenon.
Sarkozy has frequently moaned that he “suffered” in his youth by being forced to read The Princess of Cleves, a 17th-century saga of thwarted love by Madame de Lafayette, widely regarded as one of the first European novels and a favorite on French syllabuses.
Recently he scoffed: “A sadist or an idiot — you decide — included questions about La Princesse de Cleves in an exam for people applying for public sector jobs.”
He puffed that it would be “a spectacle” to see low-level staff talk about the difficult work published in 1678.
Sales of the book have soared as Sarkozy’s popularity plummets.
Protest takes many forms, and reading the novel has apparently become an act of rebellion against the president. This week the Paris book fair sold out of badges saying “I’m reading La Princesse de Cleves.”
Scores of public protest readings have been held at places such as the Sorbonne, including one by the actor Louis Garrel. The novel, a tale of duty versus love at the king’s court, has become a symbol of dissent among university staff protesting against Sarkozy’s reforms. Jean Fabbri, head of the main union of university lecturers, said reading the book was “a form of resistance.”
The cultural magazine Telerama this week polled 100 French writers on their favorite books and The Princess of Cleves came third, something the magazine said would never have happened before Sarkozy’s jibes. Another magazine deemed it “the most startling political-literary phenomenon of the moment.”
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