French weekly magazines review 9 November 2014

President François Hollande’s mid-term blues and the toppling of Burkina Faso’s veteran leader Blaise Compaoré monopolise the comments in this week’s French magazines.

The heavy atmosphere hanging over France half way through Hollande’s presidency attracts the most comments.

Le Canard Enchaîné mocks his determination to stay the course, ignoring calls from his opponents running from the conservative right to resign or dissolve parliament and criticism from his own camp.

The weekly says the climate couldn’t be gloomier with economic indicators at half-mast, national morale hitting rock bottom, unemployment at an all-time high of 10.8 percent, the budget deficit at 4.3 per cent of GDP and the president’s popularity rating at an unprecedented 13 per cent, making him the most unpopular French leader in French contemporary history.

At least Hollande can congratulate himself on two subjects, Le Canard says, military interventions abroad and the fight against the Ebola epidemic.

The left-leaning Nouvel Observataur, which has rechristened itself L’Obs, devotes its editorial this week to Hollande’s time at the Elysée presidential palace.

According to the publication, despite all that can be said about his dismal record and his unpresidential ways, his two and a half years in power have been a very short time to put an end to several decades of government carelessness, global economic stagnation and mass unemployment and to turn around a country aspiring to change yet clinging to its old habits, reflexes and social policy.

France didn’t change an iota under the previous administration, the magazine says. In reaction to the uncertainty, disappointment and mounting anger in Hollande’s own camp, L'Obs holds that the left no longer inspires people, except those who don’t want to see it in power.

Right-wing L’Express is already discussing the possibility of the “worst-case scenario” of Front National (FN) leader Marine Le Pen triumphing in the 2017 presidential election.

According to the journal, the hypothesis can no longer be ignored, as the FN’s progress is deep in voters’ minds as well as in the ballot box. L’Express believes that France seems ready to try out the FN despite nursing some anxieties about Le Pen’s readiness to rule.

Marianne describes all the talk about Le Pen taking over the Elysée as sheer propaganda. According to the left-wing magazine, while increasing numbers of the electorate back her, some of her voters do not seriously want her in power. Le Pen lacks the political skills and stature to restructure and unify her far-right party, which continues to be managed as a family business, it argues.

The overthrow of Burkina Faso’s strongman Blaise Compaoré, who ruled his country for 27 years, draws comment from the magazines.

L’Obs captures a telling moment in the Burkinabé uprising - a news presenter broadcasting live from a studio of the national ORTB broadcaster in Ouagadougou surrounded by anti-Compaoré demonstrators.

Civil society personalities shared their views with Le Point about the regime of privilege that characterised the Compaoré system, one of musical chairs for posts, with 90 per cent of the country’s wealth concentrated in the hands of a few individuals.

Marianne gives an inside account of the events that led “le beau Blaise”, as Compaoré was fondly called, to resign. He was able to escape by being exfiltrated to Côte d’Ivoire with a little help from the French government. Marianne accuses France of turning a blind eye to his record of abuses.

The allegations about Compaoré being a darling of the French are corroborated by Le Canard Enchaîné. The satirical weekly says Compaoré was not just a pillar of the Françafrique special relationship but also one of the African leaders named by former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s adviser Robert Bourgi as one of the donors of the brief cases full of bank notes he admitted transporting to the Elysée during the rule of several conservative leaders.

L’Express expects Compaoré’s downfall and the birth of a “black African Spring” to send a powerful message to Africa’s long list of despots clinging to power through rigged elections and the manipulation of the constitution to extend their rule.