Unloved Hollande courts French anew

Paris, May 2 

“Je ne t'aime plus, mon amour” — “I don’t love you any more, my love” — was the wistful song of a love gone cold which greeted devotees of President Francois Hollande as they arrived at a rally for him last week.

An odd choice to fire up a political gathering, the track nonetheless captured the deeply unloved quality of Hollande's presidency just as he and his closet backers start to explore whether he has any real chance of a new term in 2017.

Just before he was elected in 2012, Hollande tweeted of the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, by then facing broad disenchantment: “Can you imagine five more years with the same?" Now the same question applies to him. Since coming to power, Hollande has watched his ratings crumble to historic lows over a failure to restore the economy, doubts over his leadership and policy U-turns on security and other policy.

A poll published April 20 by the Viavoice agency found only one percent of voters think Hollande would make a “very good” president if given a second term next year; barely 10 percent judged that he could be “quite good”.

A steep fall in membership of his Socialist party shows the disillusionment even among allies: the number of members has halved from 1,73,000 in the year he was elected to just 86,000.

While last week's gathering in a Paris university building was largely attended by grey-haired supporters, France's youth have little time for Hollande. Thousands have joined sometimes violent protests against a labour reform he says will encourage hiring but which they fear will make it easier to be sacked.

Polls show many left-wingers who backed him in 2012 won't this time: Without wooing them back he has no chance. To that end, he has promised more subsidies to students and a pay rise for teachers. Yet many on the left see the labour reform as a betrayal, the last straw after his 2014 pro-business switch and an attempted security crackdown that was ultimately shelved.

“We've lost our credibility,” said Benjamin Lucas, the head of the Socialist Party's MJS youth wing said. As things stand, 12 months before the normally two-round presidential vote, several opinion polls over the past few weeks have shown he would not even secure enough support in the first round to make it to the run-off, whoever his opponents are. — Reuters