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I don’t understand. Why is it so hard for France to have political stability? What are people’s expectations? Can their demands ever be met, or will they be stuck in a perpetual political instability?
The kind of stability that you advocate for means "quietly suffer under a bad government that does not represent the will of the people".
First step of getting a better government is to kick out the old government.
But that’s what I’m asking. What IS the will of the people? It just seems like everyone in power has, is and might be thrown out.
Who do people want in power? Le Pen? It certainly doesn’t seem like it and I’ve read some pretty nasty things about her and her russian connections.
Edit: at this point it seems that the whole of Europe is crumbling upon itself and fascists are getting warmed up on the sidelines. Europe needs unity now more then ever, not constant division and petty disputes, offering ourselves up on a platter to the likes of Putin.
France is heavily centralized, has deep rooted corruption, favors the rich with tax exemptions and loopholes while dismantling social security and basic opportunities for the lower and middle class, believes itself to be a global power and maintains a military accordingly, but fails to secure its post-colonial resource exploitation more and more. Add to that a catastrophic strategic blunder in focusing on more nuclear power as the primary energy source, instead of developing much cheaper renewables, which will probably cost the country hundreds of billions if not trillions over the next century.
While Macron was hailed as some sort of "center alternative" to Le Pen in many media outlets outside of France, he actually is a hardcore neoliberal that set out to pillage the country in favor of the rich even more and blame it on the immigrants, further helping the Fascists gain momentum.
For reference how bad the corruption in France is. Former president Sarkozy and his crownies are currently under investigation as they have been bankrolled by the former Libyan dictator Gaddafi.
So it is basically what we see in many countries around the world right now, but the decline is more advanced. France used to be able to mask its internal economic decline with its resource exploitation.
Basically there are three large coalitions one the left, center and right. Those are then made up of individual parties. All three are roughly the same size and Macrons centrist are calling the shots. As obviously the right and left have less they agree on and Macron is president. However both of those groups want to be president and the individual parties want more power for themself as well. So every once in a while the parliament gets blown up, due to the three coalitions fighting.
Add to that a culture of protests and rather strong unions and voila you get hard fights. The good part is that the French rich are genuinly worried about loosing their heads.
My understanding is that the left is strong, so the center has to cozy up to the right for power. I mean, what other option could the center possibly have? 😑