French government faces vote of confidence

PanARMENIAN.Net - Prime Minister Manuel Valls will try to persuade the National Assembly to back France's deeply unpopular government on Tuesday, Sept 16, in a vote of confidence, BBC News reports.

President Francois Hollande has been hit by a cabinet anti-austerity revolt and savaged in a book by former first lady Valerie Trierweiler.

Opinion polls put Hollande's ratings as low as 13% with almost two-thirds of voters wanting his resignation. He also faces the return of ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy to politics.

At least 30 Socialist MPs are thought likely to abstain in the vote, triggered by a cabinet reshuffle after three left-wing ministers lost their jobs for criticizing the government's austerity measures, the BBC says.

Valls comfortably won a similar vote in April but if he fails to secure backing in the 577-member assembly for the government's program he will have to tender its resignation. Analysts say he needs the backing of another left-wing party to win the vote.

On top of a 10% unemployment rate and negligible economic growth, the government has also had to concede that it will be unable to bring its budget deficit below the EU limit until 2017.

Valls has denied telling aides, in remarks quoted in Le Monde newspaper, that "if three to six months from now the situation has been turned around, we'll be finished". He has called for party unity, having already warned that the far-right National Front is at the "gates of power".

Former center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy is also set to return to the political fray by the end of the week, with the aim of leading the opposition UMP into the 2017 presidential election. Sources said he would either announce his decision in the newspapers or on Facebook.

RTL radio said Sarkozy would put his decision to return to politics down to Francois Hollande's "weakness" as president, as well as the absence of an opposition leader and the rise of the National Front.

Hollande's reputation has taken a buffeting in recent weeks, not least because of a best-selling book by Trierweiler, who claimed the Socialist leader despised the poor, labeling them "the toothless ones".

Although the president has vehemently denied the allegation, latest opinion polls put his popularity rating at a dire 13%.

Hollande will attempt to fight back on Thursday, facing the nation in a lengthy televised news conference.

Commentators believe Manuel Valls's government will scrape through Tuesday's vote but it will face strong opposition within its own ranks to planned cuts in public spending in the eurozone's second-biggest economy.

Although the 35-hour working week will not be touched, the government aims to cut red tape in the workplace which involves stiff regulations in professions ranging from driving instructors to pharmacists.