Rising Expectations in France

...ensure children from underprivileged backgrounds school meals and, whenever possible, free tutoring outside school hours...

...Guigou's face lit up when Jospin told the National Assembly that the Justice Minister would henceforth not interfere with the work of magistrates...

...Nevertheless, lying behind it is the potentially dangerous conviction that events are more easily influenced in the street than through the ballot box—even though peaceful methods are usually preferred to violence...

...Jospin hoped in this fashion to quickly create 350,000 new public sector jobs that would beef up police in high-crime areas...

...Yet more people in France belong to one or several of the thousands of associations that have mushroomed throughout the country in recent years than to political parties or trade unions...

...As a result, only some 40,000 jobs in the area of education are now expected to materialize this fall...

...By law, ministers must on appointment relinquish their seats in the National Assembly...

...This has delighted Environment Minister Dominique Voynet, leader of the small Green faction that, along with the Communists, is part of his parliamentary majority...

...Some of the new Green and Socialist deputies—teachers, social workers, civilrights lawyers—belong to this grassroots France...

...There is a growing fear of tomorrow...

...As for environmental hazards, Jospin says they will not be dealt with from the top...

...Jospin is perhaps more of a Jacobin than a Girondin, a man of the liberté, égalité, fraternité mold, attached to the idea of an impartial state that he believes must be powerful, efficient and fair...

...A proposed constitutional revision—for which Chirac's support will be needed—would institutionalize this, reduce all elected mandates to five years (including the seven-year presidential term) and introduce electoral parity between men and women...

...Deputies always say that, of course...

...These fresh-faced, youngish deputies say they are wary of the gilded trappings and privileges of theirnew status...

...Secretary of State for Schools Ségolène Royal has similarly promised watchfulness on another front that currently worries parents: pedophilia...

...Implicitly, these reforms are an indictment of longtime practices that prevailed as well during Socialist President François Mitterrand's years in the Elysée Palace...

...The Jacobins advocated a strong state (in continuity, although they would have denied it, with the absolutist monarchy instituted by Louis XIV...

...Jospin has promised residence permits for immigrants in catch-22 situations because of confusing legislation, which he wants to simplify...

...Indeed, his failure to ultimately deliver would further discredit a mainstream political class whose image has been tarnished over the past decade or so by assorted ideological battles, opportunism, corruption, and a remoteness from daily concerns...

...The target might be an unfair highway toll, a planned mammoth garbage incineration plant, or the threatened closure of a school or post office...

...After becoming President in 1981, Mitterrand sought to reconcile these two outlooks by creating regional assemblies and increasing mayors' prerogatives...

...To some extent they are right...

...For a start, Jospin has urged a "republican pact" to try and restore a sense of ethics to public life...

...Jospin himself spent the past four years as a rural-district councilor in southern France...

...Allègre insists he will bring in police and magistrates to counter school violence if necessary, an approach that would have been taboo in the 1980s...

...Concern over mounting violence and declining standards in schools, for example, has led parents to join forces to swap experiences on child-rearing and homework...

...Trade unions dominate the labor scene and enjoy support far beyond their numerical importance, particularly among public-sector employees...

...Government, no matter how democratically elected, "cannot monopolize the right to decide," he told the National Assembly, "decisions should involve those concerned...

...Many groups exhibit an impressive ability to galvanize widespread support...

...At the same time, he is aware that overcentralization makes for rigidity...

...Members of the new Cabinet were in addition asked to relinquish responsibilities they may have held as mayors of large towns or presidents of local assemblies...

...He has canceled Juppe's decision to eliminate several thousand posts in the public sector and opposes the outright privatization of telecommunications, electricity and mail delivery...

...For a third hitherto ignored trend, alongside the Jacobin and Girondin traditions, is increasingly coloring public life—a grassroots determination to be heard and consulted on what affects one's daily life...

...Meanwhile, Interior Minister JeanPierre Chevènement has sacked Police Chief Olivier Fol, who last year refused to assist a magistrate trying to unravel a complex misuse of public funds that partly seems to have benefited the wife of Paris Mayor Jean Tiberi, aproche of Chirac...

...Rightly or wrongly, her predecessor, Jacques Toubon, gave the impression of attempting to protect people in Chirac's entourage under investigation for alleged graft and favoritism—to such an extent that he lost what was considered a safe constituency in Paris...

...Unfortunately, bureaucracy and corruption have increased too...

...Economic and educational policy-making remained sternly centralized, however, as did maj or infrastructure projects and health policies...

...Three of them—widely respected for their competence and integrity— have been named to key posts: Labor (Martine Aubry), Justice (Elizabeth Guigou) and Culture (Catherine Trautmann, who doubles as the government spokeswoman...

...organize leisure activities for youngsters, and so forth...

...Reversing the situation will depend largely on his managing to fire up the economy and lower the high rate of unemployment, but also on the new team's ability to inject a fresh dose of democratic spirit into the way the country is run...

...The spiral must be broken...

...Since needs vary from place to place, joint projects are to be worked out between the central government and local administrations...

...Chirac himself has said he favors full independence forthejudiciary...

...But if they can help Jospin stay in touch they will be doing him, and the country, a favor...

...They were relieved to hearthe Prime Minister say, "We owe it to our children that they should be safe at school, where the situation has worsened unacceptably in the past few years...

...There was some tooth-grinding in the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic Party (RPR) and its allied Union for French Democracy Party (UDF), but it was hard for the Center-Right opposition to find fault...

...What this really meant was: We're all heirs of the Bastille...

...Jospin's government includes eight women...

...JOSPIN'S CHALLENGE Rising Expectations in France By Janice Valls-Russell Paris "There is something absurd and unfair about our society Globally it has never been so rich, yet thousands of people sleep in the streets, go without medical care for lack of money, cannot afford to send their children to school canteens...

...Education Minister Claude Allègre has announced that he plans to "deconcentrate" France's "mammoth" educational system, which he likened to the Red Army (it employs more than 1 million people...

...Recent police investigations into child pornography have resulted in charges being brought against more than 100 individuals across France, some of them teachers...

...Our republic has no need for a political police,' said Jospin...

...the Girondins were "regionalists" and, in this respect, heirs of the feudal (and frequently feuding) lords of the Middle Ages...

...In fact, the governability of France in years to come may depend on its leaders' ability to deal with this desire to influence decisions from the bottom up...

...Less ambitious pressure groups spring up locally and disband once they have achieved their goal—or failed to, as the case may be...

...Foreign observers tend to dismiss the French as a selfish, corporatist bunch, resisting changes vital to improving the economy and succumbing to trade union propaganda...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...A group of councilors close to him has gone into opposition against the RPR president of a local assembly south of Paris accused of misappropriating public funds...

...And RPR parliamentary leader Philippe Séguin (who has eclipsed the defeated Prime Minister Alain Juppé) is setting his own troops' ethical standards even while dismissing Jospin's "republican pact" as a smoke screen...

...Jospin's words may mean more than he himself realizes, especially his declaring that "nothing can be achieved without citizens' individual and collective participation...

...Noting that he could have written parts of it, Pasqua quipped: "In the end we're all a bit Right-wing and Left-wing...

...In his National Assembly address, Jospin reminded local decisionmakers that they are accountable to their citizens at all times, not just during elections...

...Still, local power has increased in areas such as public transport, welfare, youth-training programs and the building of schools and low-rent housing— although it remains well below the devolution enjoyed by Germany's Länder or Spain's autonomous regions...

...Parents remember, though, that when Jospin was Education Minister, under Mitterrand, he famously refuted teachers' complaints about violence...

...provide help to the elderly and disabled...

...Thus did France's new Prime Minister, Socialist Lionel Jospin, acknowledge in his policy statement last June 20 before the National Assembly that he had been elected to bring about change—like neo-Gaullist President Jacques Chirac two years earlier—and that he was aware of the "big responsibility" he now had...

...Environmental groups have (to cite just a few causes) championed Pyrenean bears and endangered bird species, challenged the hunting lobby, and opposed the building of highways across beauty spots...

...Antiracist organizations, initially set up in the 1980s by figures close to the Socialist Party, persuaded tens of thousands of people to take part in marches earlier this year...

...To a great extent, France owes its centralized democracy to the Jacobins' victory over the Girondins in their bloody tug-of-war during the Revolution...

...So did his number two at the ministry, Claude Allègre, whom he has appointed Education Minister...

...Today's participatory movement is a toned-down, broader-based ideological outgrowth of 1968, with the decided plus of fighting for a defined cause, be it endangered bears or illegal immigrants...

...Former Interior Minister Charles Pasqua went so far as to praise the Prime Minister's speech...

...It has been announced, too, that plainclothes detectives, often used in the past to gather information on political parties and trade unions, will restrict their activities to policing and security tasks...

...But once confronted with the reality of France's deficit he had to concede that his promise was a rash one...