Issues Under Fire: Hollande En route to Rout the Right
French President Francois Hollande's Socialists and allies looks as though they've taken the first-round of France's parliamentary elections. If he can secure a majority needed for the Socialist to govern with a mandate, he'll not be stymied by an obstructionist opposition determined to hamper promised reforms pledged during the Presidential elections.
Pushing reforms aimed at shoring up France's struggling economy, President Hollande's approach is grounded in a growth strategy as opposed to austerity being favored by France's Right of center philosophies and of course Germany's Angela Merkel who holds Europe's purse strings these days.
Owing his victory over Sarkozy by arguing that the fiscal responsibility pact signed by the former French President needed to be reworked, President Hollande and Prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault's interim government has gotten the ball rolling early by cutting ministers' salaries by 30 per cent, plegding to reduce executive pay at state-owned firms and lowering the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.
Sarkozy's UMP party in the meantime are sounding the alarm that the Socialists are preparing huge tax rises to pay for what the Right argues is a fiscally irresponsible spending program. Like the Republicans in the United States, Nicholas Sarkozy and crew are expected to play the role of spoiler in every way they can to offset and undermine what the Left attempts to accomplish.
In the final analysis, Francios Hollande is on the verge of governing with a mandate. If only the American president could be so lucky. President Obama and the United States will need a similar 2012 election outcome as the French, since divided governments ultimately leads to stagnation and political gridlock. Another four years of the Tea Party's ignorant activism, could literally cripple the United States and eventually the world's ability to recover economically for decades.
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