Summer 2024 has seen a lot of good surprises: fabulous discoveries, especially therapeutic ones, all too often unnoticed; a woman in the position, for the first time, to be elected president of the United States; flamboyant and serene Olympic Games; a dictatorship overthrown by a Nobel Peace Prize winner in Bangladesh. And many others.
It also experienced its share of wars, massacres and famines. Women around the world (not just under the Afghan and Iranian dictatorships of feminicide) continued to be martyred by men, in the deafening silence of almost all other men, including in their own countries; the climate continued to deteriorate, without making headlines; more than one and a half billion people spent this summer, as in previous seasons, in unbearable slums, with no drinking water or sanitation; more than 150 million remained homeless, Many of them on the roads of exile; dictators clinging to power, despite the verdict of the polls, as in Venezuela; Russia continued to do everything to crush Ukraine, playing a game that is more dangerous every day. The Chinese have repeated that the choice for the Taiwanese is between surrender and annihilation; Netanyahu and Hamas have continued their deadly struggle, to the great misfortune of both peoples. Finally, Donald Trump has confirmed that he is still in a position to win next November.
Has there been any deep, serious, collective reflection this summer somewhere in the world on what needs to be done to avoid the universal chaos and global collapse that all this is leading to? No doubt not: we continue to behave as if we see nothing.
While it is not surprising that a thick veil surrounds the plans of dictatorships, how can we understand that democracies have not made more use of this summer to reassess, in full transparency, their responses to these challenges, to discuss it openly and finally engage in the general mobilization that circumstances require.
They had the opportunity: most of them have gone through, or will go through before the end of the year, major election periods. All had the time and the duty to organize this summer extensive workshops of strategic and programmatic reflections.
It was not so. As always, politicians in democracy have been procrastinating. (And, if we want to take a closer look, many of us have also been procrastinating, in our professional or personal lives; but that’s another matter).
In France, in particular, a country with problems: too many injustices, too many obstacles to the success of women and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and minorities, too much bureaucracy, too many administrative layers, too many regulations, too many taxes, not enough engineers, caregivers, teachers.
We would have liked the political parties to take the time this summer to revisit the programs they had to botch up in a week before the impromptu parliamentary elections, and to discuss among themselves and with all the union and association stakeholders the country’s priorities. But no. There have been only, as for years, postures and debates of people: the National Assembly has begun a hibernation that will end only with the next presidential campaign; the France Insoumise continued to think only of the second round of these same presidential elections, and did everything possible to confront the candidate or the candidate of the extreme right; the other parties no longer know where they are, swung between vociferous opponents and cumbersome allies.
After the appointment of a prime minister, a new government will be assembled; a coherent programme will remain to be developed, submitted to parliament and implemented. By this government and those who will follow it from now until the next presidential elections. And after. Who is preparing it?!
France is still a very large country. Not only because it has been able to organize the Olympic Games and receive those who came to participate in them, but also because it has become a country of growth and innovation, a host country for talent and investors, and remains one of the countries at the forefront of the world’s largest geopolitical project launched since 1945: the peaceful union of Europe’s nations.
No government in France will succeed if it does not build on its successes (economic attractiveness and European construction) to remedy its failures (school, hospital, bureaucracy, social justice). It requires more than names and postures.
j@attali.com
Image : Pexels.