Segolene Royal reveals platform for France

[BreadBros]

Segolene Royal, candidate for the French presidency for the "Socialist" Party, revealed her 100-point platform on Sunday during a 2-hour long speech. It appears that she has moved to the left on some economic issues, although she is also emphasizing societal "discipline" and "traditional values" apparently.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/11/new...ance.php?page=1 (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/11/news/france.php?page=1)
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/arti...39&parent_id=21 (http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=132313&version=1&template_id=39&parent_id=21)

Summed up, her proposals are:

Economically:
-Pledges to raise small pensions by 5%
-Increase the minimum wage to 1,500 Euros per month
-Guarantee a job or further training to every university graduate within 6 months after graduating
-Tax companies according to how much profit they reinvest in jobs and equipment versus give to shareholders
-More benefits to the handicapped
-Young people all get access to a interest-free 10,000 Euro loan
-Re-negotiate and "consolidate" 35-hour workweek

Socially:
-Create randomly selected citizen's juries to watch over government policy
-Place juvenile delinquents in military-run camps
-Reducing the number of students in each classroom
-Free tutoring for struggling students and disciplining classes for adults
-Young women get access to free contraception

Foreign Policy:
-Call on European Central Bank to take employment and growth and not just inflation into account when setting interest rates
-Continued opposition to war in Iraq
-Condemned Russian war crimes in Chechnya


Thats just the big stuff. Obviously most of us are properly hesitant to participate or support any bourgeois electoral politics and of course the Socialist Party isn't very socialist at all. However, what do people think about the sudden move to the more traditional left of Europe, which is in some ways a reversal of the move towards neo-liberalism thats been happening for the past 15 years...Are politicians going to begin to have to acquiesce to working-class demands more? What do people think are the ramifications of this platform? What do French comrades think about the situation in France at the moment?

[Cheung Mo]

What's fucked is that she's often associated with feminism and with the rights of sexual and gender minorities and at the same time she's talking traditional values.

The French SP has always been reactionary, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with Mitterrand's policies should know.

Hell, last year, the right-wing government tried to stop Apple from using proprietary and monopolistic tactic with regards to the IPod and the ITunes store. The socialist party issued a constituional challenge on these efforts..Imagine, the right defending the rights of French consumers and the left defending the rights of foreign corporate elites.

[Comrade-Z]

Place juvenile delinquents in military-run camps

What the hell kind of reactionary policy is THAT?! :o

[The Grey Blur]

She said she's modelling herself on Blair.

'Nuff said.

[Demogorgon]

Well that's better than Chirac I suppose, but I wouldn't vote for her if I were French. That said if the second round is her vs Sarkozy as it probably will be, the simple fact that she isn't Sarkozy ought to endeer her to us.

[Cheung Mo]

Originally posted by Permanent [email protected] 12, 2007 05:13 pm
She said she's modelling herself on Blair.

'Nuff said.
NAh...She's less bad (better's too strong of a word...lol) than Blair by virtue of being modestly more socially libertine.