ShareThisBy DOUG SAUNDERS
Toronto Globe and Mail
Thursday, May 03, 2007
The scent of tear gas and the crack of police batons were hard to detect in the warm air of Paris, but somehow the 39-year-old spirit of mass protest has returned to haunt this week's French presidential elections.
The intense electoral battle between conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and socialist Segolene Royal, in the frenetic run-up to Sunday's final vote, has suddenly erupted into a bizarre and surprising debate over the legacy of May 1968, when enormous student demonstrations transformed into a wider mass protest that effectively shut down the country for three weeks.
The immediate effects of those long-ago protests were limited: Schools and universities reformed their admissions systems and French voters elected a conservative government to quell the protests.
But those heady days of protest, which have become part of national mythology, appear to have captivated Sarkozy, who launched a long and sometimes bizarre rant against "the heirs of May '68," a likely reference to Royal, during a speech on Sunday night at what was probably his largest rally before this weekend's vote.
"In this election, it is a question of whether the heritage of May '68 should be perpetuated or if it should be liquidated once and for all. The heirs of May '68 have damaged political morale," a sweat-drenched Sarkozy announced to an overflowing arena in Paris on Sunday night. "The heirs have weakened the idea of citizenship by denigrating the law, the state and the nation."
Up to that point, it sounded like the rants made by U.S. Republicans, Canadian conservatives and British Prime Minister Tony Blair against what they see as the damaging values of the 1960s. But then he took it to another level.
"See how the belief in 'money is king,' the belief in short-term profit and speculation, how the values of financial capitalism grew out of May '68, because there are no more rules, no more norms, no morality, no more respect, no authority," he said.
It had the effect of putting the issue right back on the agenda: French media and the people around a great many cafe tables have been consumed with a bewildered debate over the merits and faults of the '60s protesters.
Tuesday night, Royal fired a retort, which both ridiculed Sarkozy and defended the May '68 legacy, a position that is sure to keep the debate alive.
"Two days ago, he blamed everything on May '68," she told a noisy crowd. "I wonder what fly bit him. May '68 was 40 years ago!"
"Everything seemed calm around (the area) the other day," she continued, "but to hear him talk, you would think there were cars burning nearby, barricades, lax morals and tear gas in the air. The time machine seemed to be working perfectly for him."
The May '68 debate seemed to creep even into Wednesday night's televised debate, watched by half the French population. Sarkozy described a France in which work had lost its valor _ one of the things he had earlier blamed on the protesters _ and promised a break from those traditions.
Royal was 14 at the time of the protests (Sarkozy was 13) and has spent much of her career as a Socialist distancing herself from the party's protest-movement culture. Initially known for her moralistic positions in favor of censorship, she today favors a law-and-order position on many matters of immigration and crime. But, instead of dissociating herself from the charge, she took an equally surprising tack, devoting her speech to defending the legacy of May '68.
"I don't want to get back to the situation of social immobility we had in 1968, just because the people in power didn't want to redistribute the wealth of the postwar economic boom," she said.
"When I hear Nicolas Sarkozy say that he wants to 'liquidate' May '68," she told an interviewer Wednesday, "I think he's using very violent vocabulary. ... I think he should remember that May '68 was also 11 million strikers, who obtained the right to organize and earn higher wages."
The two candidates are now within four percentage points of one another.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
