France CPE Riot Watch: Jacques Chirac Signs First Job Contract CPE into Law

Students react in Nantes, western France, as they watch French President Jacques Chirac ‘s television address on the contested government’s youth jobs law. Trade unions and students appeared more determined than ever to press ahead with strikes and demonstrations against a new youth jobs law despite a compromise plan by Chirac aimed at defusing the crisis

CNN: Chirac signs job changes into law

President Jacques Chirac signed a contested measure to promote jobs for youths into law on Sunday even though he has said it would be replaced by a modified version to defuse a crisis that has led to violent demonstrations and dealt France’s prime minister a major setback.

However, unions hoped that another round of strikes and demonstrations set for Tuesday would provide a still more powerful push to get the measure — in any form — withdrawn.

And who has the political winner been in this compromise proposal by Chirac?

Interior Minister and UMP Party President Nicolas Sarkozy.

French Government UMP party President Nicolas Sarkozy answers journalists’ questions after a meeting with French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin at the Matignon hotel in Paris. The opposition Socialist party called on the French to throw their weight behind a nationwide strike Tuesday after President Jacques Chirac failed to win support for modifications of an unpopular easy-hire, easy-fire law.

Chirac, in a television address Friday night, said he wanted a softer, revised law with two key modifications to replace the unpopular one, which Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has vigorously defended. Critics say Villepin should have shown more flexibility. Chirac said he signed the contested law out of respect, he said, for French institutions, noting that it had been passed by parliament and approved by the Constitutional Council. However, he asked that it not be applied.

Chirac’s double-barreled approach was a face-saving measure for Villepin, keeping the law alive, at least in theory, but widely seen as a rebuff of the prime minister. A decision announced Saturday to turn the writing of a second bill over to parliament — removing it from the hands of the government — was viewed as a further insult.

Villepin gets thrown out with the CPE and Sarkozy becomes the NEW heir to the Chirac presidency. True French politics. Ask Colin Powell.

The move to place the new bill in the hands of parliament put Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy — Villepin’s party rival — at center-stage in pulling the country out of the crisis. Sarkozy had said the law should be suspended. The ambitious interior minister hopes to be a presidential candidate in 2007 elections for the governing Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, which he heads.

Watch for the unions to make a deal with Sarkozy on the modification of the CPE -notwithstandig that the law may be good for the French economy and social unrest brought about by high youth unemployment.

But, also watch for big protest demonstrations on Tuesday as the LEFT tries to put a nail into Villepin’s heart over CPE.

Stay tuned……