A Parisian dilemma.

An eleventh night of rioting on the outskirts of France has caused panic within the Chirac government. As the trouble spread to other cities the French President has promised that “The law must have the last word”, summoning his top ministers to a crisis meeting to try and defuse the emergency.

This hostility of course is played against a backdrop of political turmoil as France approaches an election year in 2007 with a fractious power struggle inside its ruling centre-right government (UPM). With Chirac almost certainly destined to stand down, the future of the party will likely fall to either Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, or the current minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sarkozy has fashioned a tough persona for himself advocating hard-to-swallow reforms that would liberalise France’s restrictive labour laws and rejuvenate its flagging economy; Sarkozy has condemned the rioters as “scum” ensuring he has become the bête noire of the antagonists. Rioters have claimed that only Sarkozy’s resignation or sacking would quell the conflict.

I would argue that Sarkozy’s sacking would be a blessing in disguise for the ambitious reformer. Look back to the election of 2002 when France faced a national humiliation as the hard-right National Front gained 17% of the vote, the French electorate is clearly frustrated with ethnic divisions and prepared to elect hardliners such as Jean-Marie Le Pen to address these concerns. If Sarkozy is martyred in payment for peace he could ride a crest of anger to the presidency, powered by public dismay that the spineless Chirac has sold him out to appease the mob.

If Sarkozy is smart he will not back down from this tough condemnation of the violence and be prepared to sacrifice his current post for the ultimate prize in ’07. France will need a strong centre-right option if it to ensure Le Pen does not sweep to power in a wave of racial hate.

Hard-Right rhetoric will have prescient resonance in light of the current political climate, as this Le Pen statement in 2002 displays: -

“Massive immigration has only just begun. It is the biggest problem facing France, Europe and probably the world. We risk being submerged.”

So if France responds to this wave of violence with a political lurch to the right, a strong and confident Sarkozy would be necessary to ensure one of Europe’s major powers does not fall for Neo-Nazi solutions…