“France is in a sad state”. Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s observation is final and lapidary. This is the beginning of a text that the former IMF president shared on the social network Twitter on Tuesday afternoon. Entitled “The Fifth Error”, this message addressed to the President of the RepublicEmmanuel Macron, invites him not to make this famous “error” according to the former Minister of Economy and Finance of the Jospin government, which would be to not renew the dialogue with the intermediary bodies and not to give up its pension reform in its current version.
The first mistake of the President in office would have been, according to DSK, the choice of the particularly bad moment at the time of the economic crisis and an inflation strongly felt by the French. “If, as we learn from a recent survey, nearly half of the most modest French people have had to cut out one meal a day, then that’s where the urgency lies”, underlines the man who today has left the forefront of the political scene.
The second Macronian error would be the method. “Today, it’s not the retirement age that needs to be changed, it’s the very design of the system. It is this systemic reform that in 2017 a candidate for the presidency of the Republic said, with good reason, that he wanted to undertake. But he then surreptitiously abandoned this path,” explains the trained economist. “However, we must move away from a system based on the retirement age to build a system based on the contribution period. The cleaver age would then disappear. The duration of contribution would adjust slowly and regularly with the evolution of the needs for financing , still analyzes DSK.
“The danger is great to see the country ignite again”
He then blames the president for “a third error, strategic this time. France is not a country in which one can carry out a large-scale social reform by referring solely to a political balance of power and neglecting the social balance of power”. The former ousted presidential candidate of 2012 then invokes the figure of François Mitterrand. “This purely political strategy was doomed to failure. Not that it would have been impossible to attract a few more LR deputies to have the project voted on in the Assembly, but because you cannot govern a country by imposing on it a reform that three-quarters of the citizens reject. François Mitterrand had understood this well when, on July 14, 1984, although he had a majority in the Assembly, he announced the withdrawal of the bill aimed at integrating private schools into a Grand Public Service of National Education. even at the price of the resignation, on the 17th, of Pierre Mauroy and Alain Savary”, underlines DSK, inviting the current president to follow the example of the man who governed France for 14 years between 1981 and 1995.
Macron’s fourth mistake for Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the use of “forced passage of 49.3”, which announces a dark future in France. “Unless the Constitutional Council decides otherwise, the law risks, when it is published, reigniting the cycle of violence. It can be avoided by postponing this publication until a point of balance has been found with the social forces. Otherwise, tomorrow on the subject of pensions, the day after tomorrow on another, with the historical perspective of an increasingly brown political future, ”assures this fervent opponent of the National Front in his time.
“The violence of recent weeks has disfigured our Republic,” comments the now political adviser. “It is now up to the President of the Republic to take the initiatives to renew the threads of a social dialogue that was too suddenly interrupted. Otherwise, a fifth error would be added to the previous ones, ”he concludes in his text.