2023-10-21 14:05:36
ALAIN’S CLEAR OPINION – It is a forum of a very particular kind that I offer to the readers of France-Soir. For once, it is in fact from elements of personal life, which ordinarily interest no one, that the major subjects of concern expressed by the French people are addressed.
For twenty years, in short since the heatwave of 2003, when we were in Sarlat, my wife and I have been accustomed to taking up our summer quarters, or now at the end of summer, in the Pyrenees mountains. If the days are regularly beautiful and warm, the temperature drops as soon as the sun sets and the nights are obviously cooler as soon as you find yourself a little higher up.
Of course, we take advantage of the good weather to maintain our physical condition by hours of walking, but that does not prevent us from following regional, national and international news. When you are an attentive observer of the public scene, you never completely unplug…
In Gironde, two unvaccinated women
Privilege of retired status, nothing forces us to beat speed records to reach our Pyrenean base. And France is so beautiful that we take the opportunity to get to know it better.
Leaving Loire-Atlantique, we make a first stop at a guesthouse on the banks of the Gironde. As is customary, we share breakfast with the other night residents. In this case, two women, two sisters from Charente-Maritime who set out to discover birds. They will recognize themselves if they “come across” this article.
How does the subject come to be discussed? I can’t say with precision. In any case, not on my initiative. One of the two sisters addresses my wife to tell her, with infinite caution: “We are not vaccinated against Covid”. Obviously, we do not refuse discussion, and we thus learn that these two people followed, and still follow, with attention the work of the Independent Scientific Council. They express their respect for professors Perronne and Raoult and salute their “courage” for having led the resistance to single thought. Without knowing ourselves, there are probably more of us than we would like to admit to have refused conformism and hated the deprivations of freedoms which have been imposed in a more than authoritarian manner on the French people.
As I write these lines under the Pyrenean sun, it is all too obvious that “whatever it takes” has been a real waste. I think back to Christian Perronne, in front of his supporters in Nantes: “Three months and 400 billion”. By treating the sick, instead of asking doctors not to do their job, the matter was resolved in 3 months, and 400 billion euros were saved… which would prevent those in power from having to consider draining supplementary pension funds. of the private sector in a scandalous manner.
I cannot help but tell our interlocutors how unacceptable I find the attitude of the doctors’ unions. They should have stood up against this historic attack on the Hippocratic Oath.
When it was time to say goodbye – breakfast lasted! – I of course make it my duty to advise them to read France-Soir, a beacon in the dismal night of Covid-19, which so generously opened its columns to me. An opportunity, moreover, to confirm in a general way to the readers of France-Soir, in a particular way to my own friends, that the contributors – of whom I am honored to be – do not benefit from any remuneration. Which is very good. Also an opportunity to send a very big thank you to Xavier Azalbert and his editorial team.
In the Landes, an outraged teacher and a hotelier in favor of reinstating the death penalty
Continuing our route, we are in a small village in the Landes, at lunchtime which we will not have. Slightly set back from the road, a bakery with a beautiful terrace catches our attention. We can have a welcome snack there. It’s still 2 p.m. While my wife is inside the store, sitting on the terrace – with one eye on the open car, it’s hot! – I see a man coming towards me coming to buy his bread, obviously wanting to talk to me.
As he saw the car registration: 44, he asked me: “Are you from Nantes?”. I answer him of course: “Oui”. He then tells me his personal story, which I will pass on. I only remember that he did his higher education in Nantes, that he teaches at the university, but that for nothing in the world would he want his children to be raised in Nantes, whose image – alas! that’s the truth – has been significantly degraded for several years. On the night of September 9 to 10, twenty cars were burned in a district of the ancient Venice of the West. A few days later, the Nantes tramway will be the scene of a motorcycle rodeo…
This teacher tells me of his indignation at the “no waves” which has been, for years, the non-admissible, therefore unacknowledged, doctrine of the Ministry of National Education. Following the recent riots, he told me bluntly that, in his village, he and his neighbors are determined to organize themselves into a real militia if their property were to be attacked. According to him, if we don’t like France, its art of living and its traditions, then we leave it.
We part ways by discussing our common conviction that the political world is driven more by boutique interests than by the search for the national interest. Which explains, moreover, the re-election of Emmanuel Macron, who does not know what to do with his second mandate and… would like a third which, fortunately, our institutions forbid him. Failing that, my interlocutor is convinced that he is aiming for the presidency of Europe.
I’m not at the end of my surprises. Chatting the same evening with the owner of the establishment where we are going to spend the evening and night, and when once again a woman has just been killed, I hear her tell us again: “Since there are no longer any sanctions and the offenders fear nothing, I told my husband that the death penalty should be reinstated”.
I am old enough to remember the great debate over the death penalty, including in law faculties, before its abolition by François Mitterrand and Robert Badinter. The supporters of abolition swore that life imprisonment would be much more dissuasive when committing the act than the death penalty. The reality is that no sanction has come to replace the death penalty, which still gave some criminals pause, who admitted it themselves.
Return to the French people
From these three meetings, from these three dialogues that I in no way instigated, but also from discussions that I was able to have with “la France d’en bas”, to use the words of Jean-Pierre Raffarin, where I was able to measure the degree of rejection of the Head of State and his government, I draw a conclusion: our country is a pressure cooker whose lid, tightly screwed, threatens to explode at any moment . President of the Republic, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing believed that it was appropriate to bring together “two out of three French people” to govern the country. However, repeated surveys tell us that 66% of French people – two out of three French people, therefore – do not trust Emmanuel Macron. Only he is surprised to have been booed and whistled so copiously during the opening of the Rugby World Cup.
A year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, I found myself – in September – traveling to Prague. With friends, we went one evening for a drink, after dinner, in a tavern in this beautiful capital. I always regretted not having written a paper that I would have titled: “Return from Prague”. I would have written there, without obviously giving a date, that the fall of the communist regime was planned. From the attitude of the young people who were there, we felt that the lid of the pot was so fiercely closed that it was going to burst. In this month of September 2023, the situation in France makes me think of that. Obviously, a return to the polls would be infinitely preferable to uncontrollable movements from which we do not know who would emerge victorious.
While this text, with its title, was written on September 10, a few days later, I read in the Figaro of September 20 a statement from Philippe Bas, senator from La Manche, former secretary general of the presidency of the Republic under Jacques Chirac, noting the great concern of local elected officials “who denounce increased supervision of administrations and a lack of resources, particularly since Emmanuel Macron’s abolition of the housing tax. He concluded: “We are no longer far from the explosion of the pressure cooker.”
In one case, it is a life-size survey which attests that French men and women express their exasperation and their distrust towards a power incapable of ensuring their security, the first of freedoms, and first of all that of coming and going put struggling during the pandemic. In the other, it is local elected officials who are speaking out against the major attack on the principle of free administration of local authorities. Obviously, the cup is full, without even mentioning the continued rise in the prices of food, electricity, fuel, which makes the lives of many French people more difficult every day, or the housing crisis. whose power does not seem to measure the potential consequences.
Alain Tranchant is a formerdepartmental representative of Gaullist movements in Vendée and Loire-Atlantique and founding president of the Association for a referendum on the electoral law.
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