President Jacques Chirac found a scapegoat accepted the resignation of Jean-Pierre Raffarin in the wake of the country’s decisive rejection of the EU constitution and replaced him with a longtime ally.
The replacement: Dominique de Villepin. So is this someone who will help Chirac chart a new course? Someone with a different view, a different approach. Unlikely, according to the BBC:
Mr de Villepin, 51, is best known abroad for expressing France’s implacable opposition to the war in Iraq at the United Nations. He is also regarded as a consensual politician and is personally loyal to Mr Chirac.
Well, in other ways it’s a politically smart appointment, right? The BBC again raises a question:
But the BBC’s Caroline Wyatt in Paris says that as a career diplomat never elected to public office, he of all candidates most typifies the French elite so roundly rejected by the French people on Sunday.
And the departed PM? This:
After Mr Raffarin resigned, he said in a TV broadcast that he had made his decision independently of the EU vote. He attempted to justify his attempts to reform France, but acknowledged these had not been accepted by the French people.
“I have always been aware that what is healthy for the nation does not go unblamed by public opinion,” he said.
Opinion polls suggest that Mr Raffarin was one of France’s most unpopular prime ministers since the Fifth Republic was set up in 1958. He offered his support to his successor, who needed, he said, to continue the vital European project.
The BBC also has a roundup on European press reaction to the new Prime Minister. Also NOT good news:
Newspapers across Europe have much to say about French President Jacques Chirac’s choice for prime minister, but little of it is particularly flattering.
England’s Financial Times’ calls it a “risky choice” in an absolutely devastating editorial. A key section:
First, Mr de Villepin appears the personification of La France d’en haut at a time when La France d’en bas is in revolt. The son of a French senator, graduate of the prestigious Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the cosmopolitan Mr de Villepin may find it hard to connect with metropolitan France.
Even members of his own political family make fun of his pretensions. Recently, the populist Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr de Villepin’s predecessor as interior minister (and potential rival for the presidency in 2007), has mocked the patrician mien of Dominique Galouzeau de Villepin as well as the fact he has never held elected office. Mr de Villepin does not command much loyalty among the parliamentary ranks of the ruling UMP party.
Second, Mr de Villepin appears to know little about economic policy. …Third, Mr de Villepin has a reputation as an impulsive man, sometimes betrayed by erratic judgment. Mr Chirac’s circle has not forgotten that it was Mr de Villepin who in 1997 advised the president to dissolve the centre-right government in the face of massive street protests and hold fresh parliamentary elections. The disastrous calculation for Mr Chirac led to five years of socialist government.
Mr de Villepin suffered from a similar rush of blood to the head when foreign minister in 2003. He won much admiration in France for his passionate anti-war speech in the United Nations in 2003 during the Iraq crisis. But even French diplomats admit he then went too far in touring Africa to strong-arm francophone Security Council members into voting against a second UN resolution. In his elegiac history of Napoleon’s 100 days, Mr de Villepin commended the emperor’s spirit of sacrifice and his quest for national glory.
Reading all of this one word comes to mind: hubris…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.