THE WEEK THAT WAS... (Apr. 15, 2013)

Eleven months ago, after his election, French President Francois Hollande promised an ‘exemplary’ government. Now he is in troubles. The popularity of the socialist Hollande sank to a record low of 26%. Even left-wing and left leaning media are no longer at his side.

The Cahuzac affair gave him a huge blow: a budget minister in charge of tax who lied about a secret Swiss bank account he held for more than twenty years. The man was straight away fired, thrown out of the Parti Socialiste and is now facing charges. President Hollande renewed immediately his campaign promise of transparency and morality; he wants to clean up French politics by requiring all elected officials to disclose their wealth. Under pressure to do more, he called for the eradication of tax havens in Europe and elsewhere; all French banks would have to publish a list of their foreign subsidiaries. And he promised a new transparency law to require all French deputies to declare their assets. It didn’t really help: polls after the Presidents brave words on television in prime time found that 77% of the French are judging all French politicians corrupt; including 63% of them who voted for Hollande for President.

It seems that French voters are not stupid. Hollande’s ideas for transparency prompting unease among politicians because of lingering the French taboo over wealth. (France requires with Slovenia the least transparency in the EU from elected officials). Opposition deputies termed the ideas ‘grotesque and voyeuristic’. Libération, a socialist newspaper, wrote that deputies ‘could be end up being judged on their wealth instead of their political action’. Not very hopeful for a more transparent future in France.

Paris-Match magazine stated that President Hollande does not work as a president, ‘he prompts neither hatred, nor admiration, nor any excessive or passionate feeling’. It sounds like nostalgia for Sarkozy…