FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac probably didn't deserve the abuse that was heaped upon him by international and French media after his country voted No to the European constitutional treaty on May 29th.
When Mr Chirac called the referendum a year ago, under pressure from all French political parties, opinion polls predicted an easy ratification.
Even Mr Chirac's most devoted aides doubt he can bounce back. "It would be a mistake for others to think they can hit France when she's down," a high-ranking official warned, referring to the animosity between Mr Chirac and British prime minister Tony Blair. "Chirac will defend French interests more fiercely than ever."
Mr Chirac will face Mr Blair today in Singapore, when each will defend his capital's bid to host the 2012 summer Olympics, and then again at the Gleneagles G8 summit on Wednesday.
But winning the Olympic bid would provide only a short reprieve for Mr Chirac. Barring a miracle, the great survivor of French politics appears doomed to wait for the curtain to fall with the 2007 presidential election.
Meanwhile, Mr Chirac is undermined daily by the antics of Nicolas Sarkozy, the deputy prime minister, interior minister and president of the centre-right UMP, who intends to succeed Mr Chirac. "I am the embodiment of his end; that's why he hates me," Mr Sarkozy has said.
With boundless effrontery, "Sarko" has begun telling visitors, "Now I'm the one who gives the orders - he carries them out." This is a reversal of Mr Chirac's verbal attempt to put Mr Sarkozy in his place last Bastille day.
A poll published in Paris Match on June 30th showed that if the presidential election took place now, Mr Sarkozy would beat all possible contenders, left and right, while Mr Chirac would lose to the same politicians.
"Sarkozy gives the impression of a man who always takes action," says Pascal Perrineau, one of France's leading political scientists and the director of the CEVIPOF think tank. "The French like that, because they have the impression that their political class has grown accustomed to its own impotence."
Mr Sarkozy's other advantage is his directness. "I understand why the people left you," he recently addressed the socialist benches in the National Assembly. "You don't talk the way they do." Mr Sarkozy's conquest of Chirac's UMP party, and his popularity with voters, forced Mr Chirac to appoint him interior minister and number two in the government after the referendum.
When an 11-year-old boy was killed in a shoot-out between rival gangs in La Courneuve, an immigrant suburb of Paris, Mr Sarkozy promised to "cleanse the place with a high-pressure power hose". The remark prompted an outcry from the left and the media, who accused him of playing to extreme right-wing voters. But it won favour with the residents of La Courneuve.
Likewise, when a woman jogger was murdered by a repeat offender who was freed early on for good behaviour, Sarko demanded the judge who let the murderer out "pay for his mistake". Mr Chirac's followers often say that Mr Sarkozy is his own worst enemy, a judgement shared by Mr Perrineau: "He must modulate his rise to power. Sometimes he gives the impression he's in too much of a hurry, and that scares the French."
As France struggles through economic, political and European crises, interest focuses on the triple soap opera of Mr Sarkozy's determination to overthrow Mr Chirac, his marital troubles, and his rivalry with the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin.
French media interpreted Mr Sarkozy's latest outbursts as a sign of stress after his wife Cecilia left him. Mr de Villepin reportedly told Mr Chirac: "If Cecilia doesn't come back, we've won; he's had it." Mr Sarkozy rebounded on the cover of Paris Match with the headline: "He wants to win Cecilia back and gives himself 100 days to save their marriage."
Mr Sarkozy's embrace of liberal economics, Tony Blair, the United States and Israel - all regarded with distrust by the French electorate - are difficult to square with his extreme popularity. The public have apparently focused on Mr Sarkozy's law-and-order image as interior minister. It is also possible that, as Mr Sarkozy says, the French are less resistant to change than their politicians believe. Roland Cayrol, the head of the CSA polling institute, says 55 to 60 per cent of the French would accept more flexible laws on hiring and firing if it reduced the country's 10.1 per cent unemployment.
The Sarkozy/de Villepin tandem could clash at any moment. Mr Sarkozy has already made it clear that he will resign at the end of 2006 to campaign for the president's office. He is cordial to Mr de Villepin in public, condescending in private. "Villepin is Chirac," he said on June 11th.
Mr de Villepin's rash promise to turn France around in 100 days will be examined at the beginning of September. Known for flights of lyrical rhetoric, he surprised many by delivering a catalogue of bland economic measures in his general policy speech on June 8th. His main weapon in the battle against unemployment is the creation of a contrat nouvelle embauche (new job contract) to enable small companies fire new employees during their first two years on the job.
Mr de Villepin seeks the authorisation of the National Assembly to change labour laws by decree. "If what I'm proposing doesn't work," Mr de Villepin threatened the assembly last week, in a clear reference to Mr Sarkozy, "The next president of the republic, in 2007, will do away with the right to employment." Unemployment has been the primary concern of the French public for the past 24 years. A quarter of French young people cannot find jobs, and virtually every family has been affected by it. The failure of left and right to solve the problem is the main reason for the country's depressed, rebellious mood.
Yet the real questions about unemployment remain taboo. There is no discussion about shortening the 23-month period for which benefits are paid, or about the amounts paid - on average, €985 each month (80 per cent of the minimum wage).
The government is also frightened of the civil service, which employs one quarter of the French workforce and consumes 14.5 per cent of GDP. Out of fear of strikes and street protests, successive governments have avoided taking on the civil service or public sector workers.
Mr de Villepin mentioned the civil service only once in his general policy speech - to praise them. His predecessor had planned not to replace up to 18,000 of the 60,000 civil servants to retire this year. Mr de Villepin reduced that to 5,000 - he clearly wants to avoid trouble.
The finance minister Thierry Breton gave an alarming press conference on June 21st, revising his earlier prediction that the French economy could grow by up to 2.5 per cent this year. Instead, Mr Breton announced, the 2 per cent "floor" has become the maximum "ceiling". Most economists believe the result will be more like 1.5 per cent.
French public debt now stands at €1,067 billion, or 67.5 per cent of GDP. Every French child is born with a debt of €17,000. Next year, the €48 billion cost of servicing the debt is likely to equal all income tax collected by the state.
The opposition socialists advocate increasing government spending to stimulate a recovery. But it is unlikely they will return to power any time soon.
The referendum clarified the power struggle on the right, but it sowed confusion on the left, discrediting the socialist leader Francois Hollande (who led the Yes campaign) and leaving the socialists with no obvious candidate for the 2007 presidential election.
Though former prime minister Laurent Fabius led the victorious No campaign on the left, the rank and file still regard him as a grand bourgeois and he may not be able to transform his victory into a place on the presidential ballot.
The socialists will hold a party congress in Le Mans on November 18th. If the leaders of the No camp - Fabius, Henri Emmanuelli, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Vincent Peillon and Arnaud Montebourg - unite, they could take over the party, in what would be the most significant shift on the left in decades.
In the meantime, the mood in France is morose and pessimistic. Ask a French person what is going to happen, the pollster Roland Cayrol says, and invariably they reply: "Ca va péter" (it's going to blow up).
Yet the same interviewees say they do not wish for this social explosion - things are difficult enough as is. Nor do they intend to participate, they're too busy with personal concerns.
With the Villepin government determined not to provoke anyone, and France steeped in weariness and resignation, a continuous, low-level rumbling is more likely than street riots. The country is on hold until the 2007 presidential election. In the meantime, economic reform and Europe may have to wait.