NEWS,02.05.2012

Anti-austerity anger sweeps Europe

Fed up with high unemployment and austerity, May Day protesters took to the streets across Europe on Tuesday in a wave of anger that threatens to topple leaders in Paris and Athens.From the eye of the eurozone debt storm in Madrid to the streets of Paris and Athens, where tottering governments face elections within days, marchers spoke of job losses, spending cuts and hard times.More than two years after the eurozone sovereign debt crisis erupted, frustration with austerity is boiling over across the continent as voters wait in vain for signs of the economic pay-off.

In Spain - suffering the industrialised world's highest jobless rate of 24.4% in the first quarter of 2012 - major unions called protests in about 80 cities.Tens of thousands massed in central Madrid's Neptuno square, decrying the jobless queue, new labour reforms that make it easier and cheaper to fire workers, and a budget squeeze in health care and education."They are going to destroy more jobs with the labour reform," complained 28-year-old graphic designer Sonia Calles."Already in Spain almost everyone is an intern up to the age of 30. And now employment insecurity is going to hit those in their 30s and 40s," she said in the capital.Thousands more rallied in Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities around Greece, five days ahead of cliffhanger general elections with voters fed up with years of austerity."No-one Alone, Together We Will Get There!" read a banner draped on a stage in Athens' central Kotzia square.Polls indicate that Greeks are fleeing the main parties for smaller groups in revenge over a European Union-IMF economic recovery plan that has brought repeated waves of pay and pension cuts.
In Paris, the French presidential election race overcast the day as three powerful political movements battled for attention with competing rallies five days before polling day.Marine Le Pen's anti-immigrant far-right National Front kicked off the May Day events with several thousand supporters marching through central Paris in memory of Joan of Arc, who has become a far-right icon.Le Pen, who scored a record 18% in the April 22 first round, led the march and urged supporters to abstain rather than back President Nicolas Sarkozy or Socialist Francois Hollande in the run-off.Sarkozy's right-wing supporters were gathering at the Place du Trocadero in Paris's posh 16th arrondissement to hear their champion give his last major speech in the capital before the vote.And, on the left, trade unions organised their traditional march to the historic Place de la Bastille.With the latest poll predicting an Hollande win on Sunday by 53 to 47%, Sarkozy is anxious to gain some momentum from the rally.In contrast to Western European rallies, more than 100 000 people held a Soviet-style march through Moscow to celebrate labour day and show support for president-elect Vladimir Putin ahead of his inauguration.Accompanied by kitsch brass music and surrounded by multi-coloured balloons, Putin and outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev led the march through a central Moscow avenue.Police said around 120 000 people took part in the "Holiday of Labour and Spring" march in Moscow.
Elsewhere in Europe, people showed growing frustration with an era of crushing economic hardship.Across Poland and in the Czech Republic's capital Prague, people protested against unemployment, homelessness, and the dogged pursuit of austerity policies.Some 100 000 Social Democratic Party supporters rallied in Vienna for better education and a fairer distribution of wealth, and some 2 000 packed Bulgaria's capital Sofia urging the conservative government to resign.In Turkey, tens of thousands from all political parties packed the emblematic Taksim Square in Istanbul. Some 20 000 police mobilised in the city to ensure security in the marches.

 

Sarkozy goes for broke but Le Pen scorns his advances

 

Nicolas Sarkozy took his re-election bid to the streets of Paris on Tuesday, seeking to hijack the French left's traditional May Day show of force but failing to win over a scornful far right.With five days to go before the French presidential vote, the country's three main political movements were on the march, with three competing street rallies in the capital battling for the electorate's attention.Marine Le Pen, flag-bearer of the far-right anti-immigrant National Front seized on her party's traditional May Day homage to Catholic martyr Joan of Arc to launch another fierce attack on both remaining candidates.She had won just under 18 percent of the vote in the first round on April 22, trailing Sarkozy and the Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande, who now face each other in a televised debate Wednesday and the run-off on Sunday.Sarkozy has embarked on a determined bid to recruit her supporters to his cause, stressing again and again his promises to cut immigration, withhold voting rights from foreign citizens and oppose gay marriage.But a triumphalist Le Pen scorned his overture, damning Sarkozy and Hollande equally as creatures of the same party duopoly she blames for France's economic woes and loss of sovereignty to Europe and international finance."Who between Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy will impose the austerity plan in the most servile way? Who will submit the best to the instructions of the IMF, the ECB or the European Commission?" she demanded ironically."On May 6 it's not a president who is to be elected, but a simple employee of the European Central Bank, a Brussels sub-controller of finance, charged with applying the Commission's decisions without question," she said."And, forgive me, with regular reports to Angela Merkel's Germany," she added, as the crowd booed.Le Pen reminded her supporters that they are free to vote as they choose on Sunday, but said that she would cast a blank ballot so as not to endorse either candidate and strongly suggested that they should do the same.She declared that the National Front had set the agenda of the presidential election and imposed itself as the "compass" guiding French politics, and she urged her supporters to back the party in June's legislative election."This movement we have launched cannot be stopped, our victory is inevitable. Nothing will ever be the same again," she said.Polls suggest many of Le Pen's supporters will vote grudgingly for Sarkozy, although not enough to return him to office, and many of the hardcore party members in the crowd in Place de l'Opera disagreed."If I was obliged to vote, with a pistol to my head, I'd probably vote Hollande, because five years ago Sarkozy said he had killed the National Front," said Jean-Marie Cojannot, 66, who had come from the far south.Sarkozy was to meet thousands of his own supporters gathered at his last major rally in the capital across from the Eiffel Tower at the Trocadero, hoping for a last-minute surge to defeat a confident Hollande.And, on the left of the debate, trade unions set out along the boulevards of the Left Bank in bright sunshine on their traditional march to the historic Place de la Bastille.With the latest poll predicting a Hollande win on Sunday by 53 to 47 percent, Sarkozy is anxious to gain some momentum from the rally and said he expected "tens of thousands of French" to take part.Under fire for rallying his supporters on a day traditionally dominated by unions and the left, Sarkozy has hit back with attacks on state benefit recipients and appeals to the middle class.