French press review 23 December 2015

Waning support for President Hollande's plan to enshrine state of emergency in French constitution; 150,000 signatories back presidential pardon appeal for battered sectagenarian sentenced to 10 years in prison for shooting her brutal husband; and France braces for another international military operation to stop ISIS from overunning Libya.

DR

On this day when the French cabinet is expected to approve the draft reform of the constitution so as to give the government the powers to declare a state of emergency when necessary, only l'Humanité found the issue worthy of featuring on its front page.
"State of emergency in the constitution?: What an over-bidding of security by President Francois Hollande" rants the paper.

The Communist party daily warns that even though the French people readily tolerated the three-month extension of emrgency laws in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, the plan seeking to engrave the state of emergency in the constitution could lead to abuses, arguing that any such legislation should remain an exceptional measure.

L'Humanité speaks to six respected personalities who all decrypt the dangers of what it calls a project intended to truss up liberties.

Conservative Le Figaro, comments almost with indifference, Justice Minister Christiane Taubira's decision to remove the articles on the stripping of nationality from the text to be present to the cabinet this Wednesday. The paper says the decision has been criticized by several eminent voices from the left which are expressing reservations about the rationale of prescribing emergency laws in the constitution.

According to the paper, most critics of the reform favour an organic law that governments can amend depending on the conditions, warning that under the pretext of fighting terrorism the Socialist led, administration has thrown a thick veil on fundamental liberties.

For Libération, the measures will not prevent terrorists from entering France; argues the paper in an appeal to the government to abandon the amendment of the constitution.

For Le Monde, by abandoning the stripping of nationality of criminals holding dual or inherited French nationality, President Francois Hollande has fragilized his prospects of enlisting the support of conservatives to the constitutional reform.

Libération joins 150,000 signataries of a petition demanding a presidential pardon for Jacqueline Sauvage, the sectagenarian sentenced to 10 years in prison by an appeals court for murdering her husband Norbert Marot who abused her and her daughters for 50 years.

Libé reports that 20 inhabitants of the small village of Selle-sur-le Bied testified in her favour when her re-trial appeal opened in northern town of Blois near Douai.

They told the court that everyone knew that the huge drunkard, feared by every one in the neighbourhood, used to beat up his wife at least three times every week.

According to Libé, Madame Sauvage's lawyers wasted no time to denounce what they claim was a stupid and wicked interpretation of the law.

The Free Sauvage campaign points to statistics from the Interior Ministry showing that up to 118 women died in France last year alone from injuries inflicted by their partners.

Conservative lawmaker Valerie Boyer heading the Presidential pardon appeal, told Libé, they are not clamouring for a license to kill but the legalization of the deferred right to legitimate defence for battered women.

And will France end up intervening in Libya? That's a question Le Figaro leads with this Wednesday as Paris fine tunes a plan of intervention in Libya while hastening efforts to build an international coalition to prevent the Islamic State armed group from taking over the country on the brink of political and security chaos.

Libya lies just 500 kms off the European coast and as Le Figaro holds in an editorial, "Daech in Libya is a boil which neither Europe nor her neighbours can afford to allow to rot a little further .

According to the right-wing publication while the French military has remained tight-lipped about their plans, it is able to report that military operations in Libya could be launched within a horizon of six-months.