Almost nobody is betting today on a re-election of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2012 :
he is unpopular even in his own camp, the economic and social situation of
the country is disastrous and is not going to improve 18 months from now.
Unemployment will not decrease; inequality will not be reduced; budgetary
savings will make a lot of people unhappy; and a lot more will need to be
made for the 2012 budget, which will need to be voted six months before the
elections, in order not to have to face the distrust of the lenders. Without
even taking into account the countless enmities that the style of the
president has created in his own camp, and the multiple cases which are
poisoning the political atmosphere, the stage is thus set, in 2012, for the
first time in 24 years, so that the Left wins the presidential
elections and legislative elections that will follow. And yet, it is likely
that this will not happen, because the left has put in place, once
again, one of these formidable losing machines, for which it has the
secrecy.
For at least six reasons:
1. The Socialist Party (SP) will not nominate its candidate before October
2011. Which leaves the SP with no spokesman, no agenda. And, France has
never elected as president someone who was not clearly identified as a
candidate for a long time.
2. Even within the SP, the leaders are more occupied with tearing each other
to pieces than building a credible answer to the crisis. The SP has no line,
or rather there are five or six depending on who is speaking.
3. The current leadership of the Socialist Party, particularly weak, is held
hostage by a left wing irresponsible, basic and incompetent, which speaks on
behalf of the party, being its spokesperson. Such a position would only make
sense if it was consistent and accountable, as was the case when Francois
Mitterrand was elected on a program of union of the left, radical, but
coherent and quantified. This is hardly the case today. This can only
alienate votes from the center, without bringing any votes to the extreme
left not even among the abstainers.
4. Some socialists notables would prefer to lose the presidential elections,
in order to win the local elections: why would they all sacrifice themselves for
the victory of just one of them?
5. The various opposition parties have economic and ecological concepts
diametrically opposed to each other. And they do not work to define a
minimum common program for fear of revealing in the open their huge
disagreements.
6. Even more, environmentalists think they have all interest, like the
Communists in their time, to have the Socialists lose, in order to open the
way for a totally different form of alternation between two models of
development and to reject the socialist party to the rank of auxiliary for
the right. Left wing voters can only despair of such a coalition of losers.
Especially since a defeat of the Left in 2012 will send it to 2017, date
when the left will have been excluded from the Elysee as long as between the
advent of the Fifth Republic and the election of Francois Mitterrand. The
left can still escape from this trap it tends to itself. On the condition of
facing it lucidly. And by not forgetting that Nicolas Sarkozy has been and
will remain a formidable opponent. And that he, unlike all his rivals, is
only thinking about this.