France's Socialists Promise Whit Monday Public Holiday if Elected

Sources: Le Figaro and France Public Holidays. Part of the Socialist Party's "projet" which is supposed to be binding upon its presidential candidate, contains the promise to re-instate Whit Monday as a public holiday in France.

Analysis: Recall that the Whit Monday public holiday was canceled in a national surge of solidarity with the over 15000 elderly who died as a consequence of the summer of 2003 heat wave in France. However, as the first occurrence of that cancellation neared (in May 2005), voices on the extreme left and extreme right of the political spectrum became more and more vocal in their refusal to accept one less public holiday, in exchange for better treatment of old people in France.

In most countries, the influence of the extreme left and extreme right is limited, but in France's last presidential election, in 2002, the combined vote for the extreme left and extreme right neared 30% (thirty percent) of the popular vote, with 5 presidential candidates positioning themselves to the left of the Communist Party (ie. denouncing the Communist Party as being too "bourgeois"), and with the extreme right presidential candidate reaching the second round of voting. Then in 2005, it was essentially an alliance between the extreme left and the extreme right that managed to scuttle the European Constitution referendum.

The next French Presidential Election will occur in 2 stages, on April 22 and then on May 6, 2007. The socialist candidate is expected to qualify for the second round, but current polls do not show her as winning the second round. In any event, the socialist presidential candidate, who seems to be a modern European socialist, has repeatedly said that she would only take what she deemed useful, from the socialist party's project (which was mostly put together by the archaic wing of the party).

See also: For an excellent analysis of the upcoming French elections, and the French political system in general, in English, the best we have read anywhere, in any language, see the recent post on the Venezuela News And Views blog.