French fears that protests will spread from the Caribbean to the mainland

[Joanne98]

THERE was a time when Nicolas Sarkozy relished crisis management. His fearless, no-nonsense approach resolved more than one stand-off. Few people have forgotten how, as a young mayor of Neuilly 16 years ago, he walked into a nursery school and negotiated with an armed hostage-taker threatening to blow up the building. Yet a series of protests, overseas and on the mainland, are now testing the president’s skills to the limit.

The most turbulent have been on the island of Guadeloupe, a French department in the Caribbean that has been paralysed by a general strike. One union member was shot dead when matters turned violent. Although the island seems calmer now, the strike goes on, as does the conflict between the government and the unions, which want a €200 ($256) monthly pay rise. This week trouble broke out in Martinique, a neighbouring island, with cars burned and shops looted.

The biggest fear is that the turmoil may spread to the mainland. In recent weeks, high-school pupils, teachers, university researchers, railwaymen and car workers have taken to the streets. On one day in January some 1m-2.5m people protested against low pay and job cuts. Unions have called another day of action for March 19th. In a poll, 63% of respondents said the violence in Guadeloupe could spread to mainland France.

In many ways, the troubles in Guadeloupe and Martinique are specific. With their French post offices, town halls, prefects and use of the euro, they are in theory French administrative departments. In reality, the state pumps €13 billion a year into the overseas territories in subsidies and tax breaks, including a 40% salary premium for civil servants. Yet unemployment is three times as high as on the mainland, and GDP per person just over half as big. Prices of goods such as yogurt or fresh beef are on average 34% higher, according to France-Antilles, a newspaper.

A demand for higher pay to compensate set off the strikes in Guadeloupe. Mr Sarkozy’s government is in talks with the unions. Yet the protests are racial as much as economic on an island where the white minority owns most businesses. The main protest group calls itself, in creole, Movement against Pwofitayson, a blend of the words “profiteering” and “exploitation”. Elie Domota, its leader, who is a securely paid French civil servant, talks of re-establishing “the legitimate rights of blacks as the majority people”. The struggle is an unusually toxic mix of neocolonial resentment and economic unrest.

There are still grounds for worrying about contagion. French opposition politicians have piled in to Guadeloupe to “express solidarity”, implicitly linking the struggle to home. The poster-boys of anti-capitalism have made the trip, including José Bové, a sheep-farmer-turned-campaigner, and Olivier Besancenot, a hard-left Trotskyite leader. Even Ségolène Royal, a Socialist former presidential candidate, dropped in this week, proclaiming, “Let’s remember the French Revolution!”

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13185005