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After the election, however, Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppe confronted a hard reality: to meet the budgetary requirements for joining Europe's single currency by 1999, France must drastically reduce its public deficit from 6% of its GDP, or $83.6 billion, to 3%. As a result, in a jolting reverse, Chirac has abandoned his pump-priming promises in favor of a two-year program of new taxes, limits on social spending, and a public-sector wage freeze.
The proposed changes in the welfare system, which is currently $46 billion in the red, have angered a populace wedded to generous cradle-to-grave social benefits. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have spilled into the streets. Leading the charge are the country's coddled public-sector workers, whose privileges include guaranteed employment, special pension benefits and early retirement--at age 50 for some categories.
The protest began on Nov. 24 with a one-day general strike by civil servants. The movement snowballed when employees of the debt-ridden national railroad, protesting plans to restructure the company, launched an open-ended work stoppage. They were soon joined by mass-transit workers, mail sorters and state utilities workers. The result was cities snarled with traffic jams and millions of people forced to walk, bicycle or hitchhike to work. The economic cost to the country is hundreds of millions of dollars a day.
So far, in spite of the massive disruptions and frayed nerves, public opinion appears to favor the strikers. But most analysts agree that Chirac has little choice but to stay the course. "If the government backs off this time, it is finished," says Pascal Perrineau, director of the Center for the Study of French Political Life. "There is no way it could last to the next general elections or avoid a very serious political crisis."
For Chirac, who is now paying the price of excessive campaign promises, the challenge is to win back public trust and persuade his countrymen to accept the kinds of sacrifices that no other peacetime leader has ever asked of them. That will require far better communications skills than his administration has thus far demonstrated. The President might start by dusting off--and taking to heart--one of his most effective campaign slogans: "Politics is not the art of the possible; it is the art of making possible what is necessary."
--With reporting by Bruce Crumley/Paris