The grève générale (general strike) or the rêve générale (general dream)? France is in the grip of paralytic pension protests, contemplates Gamal Nkrumah Paroxysms and spasms are no interlopers of French politics. However, they are at present unmistakable symbols of cataclysmic shifts in global power. France is no longer a metropolitan colonial puissance, Paris is a third rate power. French President Nicolas Sarkozy's pension reform is pushing France closer to catastrophic crisis as fuel shortages were felt across the country and violence erupted on the sidelines of protests by children. Youngsters rubbed shoulders with pensioners and postmen -- the protests drew 3.5 million people on to the streets, according to the unions, and 1.1 million, according to the French Interior Ministry. Puckering his nose in distaste, Sarkozy declared firmly that he would not give in to strikers as pension reform protests rock the country. "Shortages," Sarkozy declared, "cannot exist in a democracy." It is folly for democrats in emerging economies to place their trust in France, and its supposedly sacrosanct democratic institutions. Clashes between French police and protesters, on the eve of yet another strike that paralysed Europe's third largest economy, erupted in Paris and other provincial cities. Strikes gathering pace against Sarkozy's pension reform are a characteristic symbol of a society that has traditionally favoured the rich and maltreated the politically marginalised, the economic underdog and the poor. The French president appears to be deliberately ignoring the abyss his country is falling into. He smiled conspiratorially at his compatriots. But they are no longer smiling back. He has outraged human rights activists with his immigration policies, upset traditionalists with his racy private life, and now faces determined protests over his pension scheme. His approval ratings have plummeted to 30 per cent. Sarkozy was obliged to appeal for calm after vehicles were burned, shop windows smashed and journalists assaulted. Curiously enough, it was the ecology minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, who came to the rescue of the peripatetic French, when they discovered a third of the country's 12,500 petrol stations were "awaiting supplies". This hot air double speak about fuel shortages is unlikely to save Sarkozy's game. Despite repeatedly assuring France that chronic shortages are out of the question, ministers have even formed a crisis centre to deal with the situation. Speaking from the podium of an international summit in Deauville, Sarkozy revealed that an emergency meeting would be held to "unblock" the flow of gas. What is clear in the current haze is that the French themselves are now at the barricades to prevent Sarkozy raising the retirement age, regardless of the momentum of their elected leader who is just as determined to hold the line. The Parisian Pimpernel is adamant on his refusal to compromise on his ill-conceived pension reforms, which include raising the symbolic and much-fought-for basic age of retirement from 60 to 62, and the age at which one receives a full pension from 65 to 67. The neo-Napoleon is now encountering what is arguably his Waterloo. He anxiously awaits a vote in the French senate, which, though not quite the end of the reform's passage into law, will close the main chapter of parliamentary debate. His detractors, however, are fighting against him tooth and nail. "The vote is of no importance. It's the street. If the street works well, it could still win," a Renault employee was quoted as saying. The embattled rightwing president regards his réforme des retraites as his single most important piece of legislation in the latter half of his presidency. A reform which the government and many economists say is long overdue, it aims to balance the books and show he can deliver to an electorate fed up with half-baked, unworkable policies which he disposes of as often as he does his women. This latter-day Asterix called the proposed change his "duty" to future generations. But it is those future generations of pensioners that Sarkozy is having the most trouble convincing. Today, days after they entered the political fray for the first time in their lives, les enfants have tasted the excitement of mass protest and ramped up their action even further, leaving 379 secondary schools closed, much to their teachers' delight. Sarkozy has survived his skirmishes with the paparazzi over the so-called L'Oreal scandal and his philandering. The Bling-bling even overcame their contempt for his quickie divorce from his second wife, Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz, and whirlwind marriage to the Italian model-actress- singer-what-have-you Carla Bruni. The publicity surrounding the lurid romance between Sarkozy and the ravishing Bruni, 13 years his junior, represented an unprecedented radical departure from the French tradition of keeping presidential personal paramours strictly private affairs. Private pursuits apart, Sarkozy is among the most rightwing presidents in recent French history. Since his election, he has pushed through measures to curb illegal immigration, including highly controversial mass deportations of Roma (Gypsies), ironic from the son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother of Greek-Jewish origin. He ought to know better than to persecute those less fortunate than himself. The Roma were unceremoniously booted out, but the world has not forgotten his stormy relationship with ethnic, religious and racial minorities, which has been anything but harmonious. It was, after all, as a highly combative interior minister and leader of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement that the embattled Sarkozy made his name in national politics. He sharply divided opinion in France, not only by stoking racism with his stance on immigration. He famously described young delinquents in the Paris suburbs as racaille, meaning rabble, reminiscent of the taunts of the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. Such comments prompted nationwide rioting. Now it seems he's set his sights on stoking class hatred to boot.
