Post-election violence continues in France
France’s post-election violence continued for a second night, leaving cars burned and store windows smashed in several cities and prompting the defeated Socialists to call for calm.
While the unrest has been small-scale, it sent a message to Nicolas Sarkozy: He may have won the presidency, but he hasn’t won over the many French who consider him – and his free-market reforms and tough line on crime and immigration - frighteningly brutal.
Mr Sarkozy, who beat Socialist Segolene Royal in a run-off on Sunday, is a divisive figure whose tough language and crackdowns on crime and immigration have angered many on the left – and in the immigrant-dominated suburban housing projects that exploded into rioting in 2005.
More than 700 cars were burned nationwide on Sunday night and 592 people were arrested, police said.
Late last night, several hundred people massed again at the Place de la Bastille in Paris, breaking windows in nearby shops and starting street fires. Riot police dispersed them, and about 100 people were arrested. A handful of cars were torched in the area.
In Nantes in western France, hundreds gathered again last night, with a few dozen hurling beer bottles and other projectiles at police. Police responded with tear gas and arrested several people.
Public buildings were also damaged and minor incidents were also reported in Toulouse in southern France.
“To all those who can hear me, I ask them to immediately stop all this behaviour,” Socialist Party chief Francois Hollande said today on RTL radio.
“We are in a republic, where universal suffrage is the only law we know. There can be disappointment, there can be anger, there can be frustration. But the only way to react is to take up your ballots, not other weapons,” he said.
Socialist candidate Royal had warned of renewed violence in case of a Sarkozy victory, and had sought to make the campaign a referendum on Sarkozy’s polarising persona.
But voters favoured Mr Sarkozy anyway, handing him a mandate for reforms that include tax cuts and new labour rules making it easier to hire and fire to revive the sluggish economy. He faces a steep challenge in carrying this out in a country that cherishes its generous social safety net.
Mr Sarkozy himself was on a yacht in the Mediterranean, taking time to relax before he takes over from Jacques Chirac on May 16.
