French press review 27 April 2015

A look back over three grim years of Socialist presidency is the main item on the front page at right-wing Le Figaro, while the weekend earthquake tragedy in Nepal and the difficulties facing would-be helpers, dominate the other papers' front pages.

You have to admire the people who make the big decisions at right-wing French daily paper, Le Figaro.

While the other Paris papers give pride of place to the relief efforts being organised to help Nepal in the wake of Saturday's earthquake, the top of Le Figaro's front page is dominated by local politics with a headline announcing that "Hollande is already preparing for 2017". That's when the next presidential election will take place here in France and Figaro is worried that François Hollande has already begun a systematic charm offensive, with a new communications strategy and carefully chosen public appearances.

The conservative paper says the president has quite some ground to make up, his administration being sharply criticised for the lack of results, notably on the question of unemployment. Even more crucially, says Le Figaro, Hollande faces the task of attempting to reunite his deeply divided party, with many Socialists unsure about the president's dogged adherence to an austerity-based economic policy.

The Figaro editorial is a classic.

To listen to François Hollande, says the right-wing paper, his record since taking up the presidency nearly three years ago is somewhere between good and excellent.

Indeed, adds Le Figaro with glacial irony, unemployment has made spectacular progress, taxation has gone through the roof, along with the national debt and the current account deficit. The far-right Front National has profitted from the situation to become France's top political force and the Socialist Party has suffered four successive hammerings in elections.

Against such a catalogue of catastrophe, asks Le Figaro, how does the president justify his claim for reelection?

By saying that he has put the country back on the rails and that we will all see the benefits in the course of his second five-year term. What rails, rails Figaro. The president has been prevented from making any of the crucially needed structural changes by powerful cliques in his own ruling majority.

Hollande's much-vaunted reform of labour law is derisory and won't encourage businesses to rush out and hire people. Similarly, says Le Figaro, for the youth employment bonus, a pointless additional drag on public finances.

France faces another five years of promises which no one will be able to keep. Mercifully, there's an election to allow voters put an end to this sort of nonsense.

Otherwise Saturday's earthquake tragedy in Nepal is the dominant story.

The main headline in catholic La Croix reads "Nepal still shaking," a reference to the aftershocks which have already caused much additional damage and are hampering the organisation of the relief effort. Those aftershocks could continue for the next year or 18 months, with several likely to be of around magnitude 7.O and as many as 20 in the range 6.0 to 6.5, potentially disastrous in a such poor, densely populated country.

Libération's perhaps slightly-too-clever headline reads "The roof of the world falls in". The paper says this disaster has been predicted for years but no real precautions have ever been put in place. The Kathmandu valley is an ancient lake floor, which loses its structural coherence under vibration. The area is hugely overpopulated and the complete absence of building regulations means that Saturday's disaster was simply waiting to happen.

Communist L'Humanité says Nepal is in ruins, ravaged by earthquake, devastation and poverty. While the first signs of international solidarity with the victims were almost immediate, outside aid will take time to get through, according to L'Huma, given that Kathmandu airport has been closed for security reasons, and the road network leading from India and China - neighbours who have already despatched aid - was severely damaged by Saturday's quake.