STORMY WEATHER, MANIF POUR TOUS, TIME COVER, PRINCESS CRISTINA, HYDRANGEA HOOPLA

STORMY WEATHER

Main street, Morlaix

SAY IT ISN'T SO!... I can hear the poor people in Bretagne when another Alerte Rouge from Météo France warns them to prepare for a new storm. On February 6th, the southwest part of waterlogged Brittany was hit again by severe floods caused by rain-swollen rivers, high tide and high winds. On the heels of storm Petra, storm Qumaira slammed into previously hard-hit areas of Finistère and Morbihan, leaving the town of Morlaix knee-deep in water for the fourth time in six weeks. The worn-out owner of a restaurant on main street, discouraged by the sight of one meter of muddy water in his restaurant less than 10 days after he had finished cleaning up from the previous storm, said: "We are all dead tired and worried about this extreme weather that affects not only our daily life but also our livelihood. Even if insurance covers much of the cost, clients are not coming back. Fishing boats have not gone out for weeks. Everybody is depressed and worrying about tomorrow."

Chateau de Rohan

In the little town of Pontivy in the Morbihan, a 16th-century fortified castle was heavily damaged when a wall, weakened by incessant rain and battering winds, collapsed and fell into the moat. For Chateau de Rohan, a monument classé that has withstood more than four hundred years of natural and human assaults, this was one storm too many.

A day earlier in the Pyrenées Atlantiques, a three-and-a-half ton, 100-meter-long Spanish cargo ship was tossed onto the pier as it tried to enter the port of Anglet and broke in two. The 11 sailors on board were rescued by helicopter. Luckily, the Luno had no cargo on board but its tanks held 80 tons of diesel oil that might spill. Heavy swells and high winds made it impossible to approach the vessel by sea, but after an anxious 24 hours the oil was pumped out and beach pollution in this touristy area avoided.

MANIF POUR TOUS

The issue of gay marriage and adoption is a divisive one in France that drew tens of thousands of people - for and against - onto the streets of Paris last spring. A few months later, Marriage Pour Tous was voted into law by Parliament over strong opposition from conservative Catholics. Today, those against the new law have regrouped and gone back to the streets on February 2nd under the banner Manif Pour Tous (Demonstration for All). In two well-attended marches in Paris and Lyons (500,000 according to organizers, 80,000 according to police, in Paris alone) they waved blue and pink flags depicting the traditional family of father, mother, two children, and protested loudly against the government's plans to allow IVF for same-sex couples and to introduce Gender Theory in elementary schools. The latter issue was largely based on rumors, reportedly spread by right-wing sources, that Minister of Education Vincent Peillon wants to introduce sex education and masturbation to elementary school children. When parents took children out of 100 schools, Peillon denied the rumors and reminded parents of their civic duty to send children to school but gave no further explanation. Stung by their defeat on Gay Marriage last year, the protesters, including a number of Muslims, said their message was the same as last year and they "just want it to be heard". They vowed to put up a fight to preserve the family and to oppose any further degradation of "traditional values". 

Interior Minister Manuel Valls called the protesters a "Tea Party à la francaise" and nothing indicated that the peaceful demonstration would cause undue worry in government circles, but two days later the Elysée Palace announced that the proposed bill on the Loi de la Famille (including the controversial issue of medically assisted procreation for lesbian couples) that was to go to Parliament in April of this year, would be postponed until 2015, ostensibly due to an overcharged parliamentary calendar, which nobody believes.

Jubilation on the right, embarrassment and division on the left, and a President Hollande who is once again accused of being weak and panicking in the face of opposition. According to a TNS-Sofres poll published on February 6th, his approval rating now stands at an abysmal 19%. 

TIME MAGAZINE COVER

Despite (or because of) his current troubles, François Hollande made the cover of the February 17 issue of TIME magazine. Curiously, the cover was in black and white, looking like an obituary, with the only touch of color being the yellow headline: Can He Fix France? The four-page article by Catherine Mayer and Vivienne Walt doubts that he can, citing such salient facts as "a 77% slump in foreign investment in France in 2013, vs. a 37% rise in Spain and a nearly 400% jump in Germany" and "the public sector represents 57% of GDP, making the government the largest employer in France".

On the other hand, Hollande's recent Responsibility Pact which will significantly reduce French companies' social charges by the year 2017 in exchange for job creation, has been generally applauded as a "step in the right direction" but is not expected to create employment anytime soon.

His State visit to the United States on February 11-13 (without former First Lady Valérie Trierweiler) will put the spotlight on him and give him an opportunity to polish France's somewhat dimmed luster - or at least help sell French goods.

PRINCESS CRISTINA DE BORBON

Arriving at court, Palma

President Hollande is not the only one under pressure. On February 5th, the Infanta Cristina, youngest daughter of King Juan Carlos of Spain and mother of four, appeared in court in Palma de Mallorca where in a closed-door meeting with Investigative Judge José Castro she was questioned for seven hours about her involvement in the corruption scandal surrounding her husband Iñaki Urdangarin. Former Olympic handball medalist Urdangarin, who received the title of Duke of Palma upon his marriage to Cristina in 1997, is accused of diverting €6 million from the Nóos Institute, a charitable foundation he managed, to a private company he co-owned with his wife Cristina. Part of the money was spent on lavish parties and on renovating the couple's private villa in Barcelona. Cristina, who sat on the board of Nóos, claims that she never suspected the source of the money she spent and implicitly trusted her husband.

The princess and her husband have not been charged with a crime but are officially listed as suspects. Judge Castro is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether he will call for a trial.

Cristina and Iñaki Urdangarin

This corruption scandal has further weakened the Spanish monarchy, after the public outcry in April 2012 when King Juan Carlos went on an expensive elephant-hunting safari in Botswana while his country was mired in an economic crisis. Further allegations of an affair with a glamorous German divorcee, as well as his diminished physical condition following five operations in 18 months, have fueled demands for the 76-year-old king's abdication in favor of his heir, 46-year-old crown prince Felipe. There also is a growing movement of Republicans who would like to see the monarchy abolished altogether.

HYDRANGEA HOOPLA

In several villages of the Nord Pas de Calais region of France, a rash of thefts of hydrangeas (called hortensias here) from private gardens has been noted in recent weeks. It now appears that dried hydrangea flowers mixed with tobacco can be smoked like marijuana, with similar hallucinogenic effects. There is little or no scientific evidence available, but Kurt Hostettmann, honorary professor of pharmacology at the University of Lausanne and Geneva, says that when smoked, hydrangea flowers can have euphoria-inducing effects similar to those caused by THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), a psychoactive substance found in the cannabis plant. He warns, however, that regular users risk poisoning themselves. "The secondary effects are very dangerous to the health", he says, causing stomach and respiratory problems and, when used in large amounts, can produce prussic acid, the base of Zyklon B gas used in the Nazi death chambers.

The hydrangea flower as a cheap substitute for marijuana seems to have originated in 2013 in Bavaria where hydrangea plants kept consistently disappearing from public gardens, until police caught the culprits.

As French gendarmes have vowed to catch their own Hortensia Gang, villagers in Nord Pas de Calais have begun moving their plants closer to the house and with the help of the old-time vigilante network of a French village, stand ready to do battle with the invaders.

THE SPLIT, PAPAL VISIT, SPOKESWOMAN, MORE BAD NEWS, THE HELMET, FLOODS

IT'S OVER

The high drama of President Hollande's messy love life that made front-page news in Europe and beyond has deflated like a tired soufflé. With a simple telephone call to Agence France Presse on January 25th, Hollande announced: "I am making it known that I have put an end to my shared life with Valérie Trierweiler". He added that he was speaking as a private citizen, not as president of France. [How many private citizens would call AFP about their separation, I wonder?]

The next day, Trierweiler left on a two-day trip to India to visit a French charity in Mumbai, Action Against Hunger, and attend a fund-raising dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel. She made the long-planned trip as a guest of the charity. Just before her departure she fired her attorney, Frédérique Giffard, for having spoken on her behalf without approval by saying that the parties "were trying to resolve this matter in the most dignified way possible". A few days later, it was reported that over lunch at La Lanterne, Hollande and Trierweiler had come to an agreement that left them "on good terms". 

While in Mumbai, a confident-looking Trierweiler spoke to journalists, saying that she was "vaccinated" against the hypocrisy of political life, that she will continue writing her book reviews for Paris Match magazine, and that she was fine. "Don't worry about me".

End of story? Not likely. Having lived through a very public humiliation, and being freed from the restraints imposed by the Elysée, this proud woman may decide to write a book and have the last word. A clue? She refused to sign a joint announcement of the break-up, leading to Hollande's one-sided statement: "...... I have put an end to my shared life with Valérie Trierweiler".  

SPOKESPERSON

Spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem

During the recent media frenzy around François Hollande's personal problems, I wondered why the man who has said that he wants a Chinese wall between his public and private life, was not calling upon his official spokesperson to face the press and shield him from some of the unwanted attention. In fact, Moroccan-born Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, 36, Minister of Women's Rights and Spokesperson for the Government, is rather inconspicuous. Her double title seems to indicate that the government does not consider Women's Rights nor Spokesperson to be a full-time job, and at least in the latter capacity Vallaud-Belkacem is rarely seen or heard. When under siege, the president, who is not a natural communicator, has the luxury of having a specialist do the unpleasant job for him. A Spokesperson who rarely speaks seems like a wasted asset.

PAPAL VISIT

On January 24, President Hollande paid a visit to Pope Francis in Rome under the cloud of the recent revelations about his private life. Among the delicate topics to be discussed were Gay Marriage, the separation of Church and State, and a petition signed by some 115,000 conservative French Catholics indicating their "profound malaise and growing concern" over the Socialist agenda and the upcoming legislation on expanded abortion rights and on assisted suicide.

A stern-faced pope greeted a nervous François Hollande for the 35-minute meeting which, as Hollande stated afterwards, focused mostly on points of convergence: the war in Syria, the Central African Republic, and the defense of human dignity. At the end of the audience Hollande offered the pope a book on Saint Francis, "your patron saint". "Yours too", the pope replied, finally smiling.

MORE BAD NEWS

The unemployment figures for the month of December 2013 are in and it's more bad news. Contrary to President Hollande's prediction in October that the unemployment trend was beginning to turn downward, the December results showed that unemployment increased by 0.3 percent in the month of December, and by 5.7 percent for the year 2013. It now stands at a record high of 11.1 percent.

In an awkward effort to give a positive twist to these figures, Labor Minister Michel Sapin said that employment for the category of workers under the age of 25 had markedly improved, but economists were quick to point out that this improvement was largely due to state-sponsored youth jobs rather than a sign of recovery of the economy. On a state visit to Turkey, President Hollande admitted that he had not succeeded in his attempts to turn unemployment around, but said that he feels that his current measures will bear fruit eventually.

HOLLANDE'S HELMET

One tiny uptick in the French economy occurred at Motoblouz, the company in the northern Pas-de-Calais region that fabricates the motorcycle helmet that Hollande wore on his nightly escapades. Motoblouz CEO Thomas Thumerelle said it sold 1000 "Dexter" helmets on the day that Closer magazine published the pictures of the president wearing their helmet and that sales continued to be phenomenal. He placed a quarter-page ad in national daily Libération, thanking Mr. Hollande for wearing their helmet for his protection. 

FLOODS

Continuous heavy rains have caused extensive damage along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of France. Three people were killed in the Var area, where a rock slide closed the road between Nice and Menton and cut off the ski resort of Isola 2000 for several days.

Rock slide near Nice

Hyères, Var

The towns of Hyères and La-Londe-de-Maures were particularly hard hit when several rivers burst their banks.

Earlier this month torrential rains whipped up by Storm Dirk pummeled and flooded the town of Quimperlé in Brittany which, together with much of Finistère, has been declared a natural disaster area. High waves in Biarritz shattered the glass entrance of the Thalasso spa across the wide seaside promenade, and in the Pyrenées Atlantiques region several villages were flooded and bridges and roads were badly damaged.

Quimperlé, Bretagne

A recurring comment by locals was "In my 30 (40, 50...) years here I have never seen anything like this".

Mother Nature may be trying to tell us something, but is anybody listening? 

AFFAIRS OF STATE

AFFAIRS OF STATE A LA FRANÇAISE

Julie Gayet, new First Lady?

During his televised New Year's wishes on December 31st, President Hollande had announced a Pacte de Responsabilité which he would elaborate on in an upcoming press conference set for January 14, 2014 in the Elysée Palace with 600 journalists in attendance, many of them representing foreign papers. It was to be an opportunity to roll out his economic recovery plan for the next three years. A couple of days before that date, however, the French gossip magazine Closer revealed a secret affair between Mr. Hollande and French actress Julie Gayet, backed up by seven pages of photos. The timing was bad for Hollande, as the press immediately shifted its attention from the economy to the alleged affair, and the first question asked at his press conference was: "Will Valérie Trierweiler remain First Lady of France, especially with respect to your state visit to Washington on February 11th?". The answer was short and final: "This is not the time or place to address this subject, but I will do so before the date you mentioned (2/11)".

Salle des Fêtes, Elysée Palace

The next two hours of the press conference were hugely disappointing to all those foreign correspondents who had come for "the affair" and left empty-handed. Not used to a compliant press at home, they had expected more aggressive questioning and judged the event "way too long for too little". Why, they wonder, is the French press so deferential? Is it the intimidating setting of the Salle des Fêtes in the Elysée Palace, with its excess of gold and glitter and its whiff of Gloire? Or is tough questioning just "not done" because the French president is perceived as a monarch without a crown but with all the trappings of royalty?

Although the Affair has gone viral and gotten a lot of attention worldwide, in France the reaction was initially rather muted, with man-in-the-street comments ranging from "It's an invasion of privacy" and "We have more important things to think about" to the opinion that celebrities (i.e. presidents) lose their right to privacy when they are constantly in public view, or as this French journalist in a televised debate saw it: "Hollande est un people comme les autres" (using the curious French interpretation of "people" - in the singular - as "celebrity").

Strong privacy laws have long protected presidents in France where having a mistress has been more rule than exception. Jacques Chirac earned the nickname "Monsieur 15 Minutes, shower included", and François Mittérand managed to keep his double life and secret daughter under wraps even after Paris Match magazine discovered the girl and published a photo of her with Mittérand. When faced with this evidence, Mittérand famously said: "So what?" and that was the end of the story, at least during his lifetime. Wife with sons and mistress with daughter all gathered at this funeral. So civilized, so French. 

And so impossible today, with the internet, Twitter, cell-phone cameras, a flourishing gutter press and fines that are no longer dissuasive. The French press may have reacted with more restraint than others, it nevertheless covered the matter extensively, if often in the manner of "This is what the foreign press is saying" and then repeating every salacious detail. Even if Le Scandale did not make the front pages of French newspapers (as it did abroad), the story of the affair and subsequent revelations quickly moved from the gossip magazines to the more serious papers, including Le Monde, and to television debates.

There may be a certain French pride in mousy Hollande's conquest of beautiful women (hear the Gallic rooster crowing?); and an element of soap opera in the jealousy fit of Valérie Trierweiler and her Twitter attack last year on Ségolène Royal (mother of Hollande's four children and his partner for nearly 30 years). There also was much mention again of Hollande's stated wish to be a "normal" president, and his promise of total transparency. Sidelined by his claim of privacy, journalists were only too happy to regurgitate all this while awaiting developments.

Valérie out?

But when current mistress and First Lady Valérie Trierweiler had a nervous breakdown following news of the affair and was hospitalized, the matter became more serious and more potentially damaging to the president.

Every day new revelations appeared in the papers: Prior to his press conference, Hollande had tried to have Trierweiler sign a joint statement announcing their separation (she refused); the Hollande-Gayet affair had been going on for at least 18 months (not denied); Gayet is pregnant (denied); Trierweiler had suspicions and left her apartment in June to move into the Elysée palace; Last summer Trierweiler vacationed in Greece with her sons, waiting in vain for Hollande who instead took Julie to the south of France; Gayet appointed to prestigious Villa Medici position; Gayet's appointment to Villa Medici cancelled by Ministry of Culture following scandal; Gayet sues Closer magazine; Closer withdraws article and photos from internet; Hollande has not yet visited Trierweiler in hospital (her doctors had not allowed it); Hollande finally visited Trierweiler on day six (with doctors' approval); Trierweiler to remain in hospital for ten days, then perhaps in rest home near Paris; Tryst apartment at 20 rue du Cirque belongs to convicted Corsican criminal (denied by alleged criminal who says he rented the apartment, then left it to his ex-wife who is a friend of Gayet); Bodyguard brings breakfast croissants to Hollande love nest;... and on and on. A trickle every day, until the "private" matter of the president's infidelity had grown into a firestorm that has singed his presidential image and, as some say, caricatured France abroad.

Disguised motorcyclist Hollande

On January 18th Hollande visited the small town of Tulle (pop. 1200) in the Corrèze department of central France where he used to be mayor and deputy, for the formal New Year's wishes to his old constituency. No less than 90 journalists awaited him there in hopes of some response to the growing scandal. In vain − but those from the foreign press (including BBC and The New York Times) now know where to find Tulle on the map.

Two days later, Hollande made his first solo State visit when he visited The Netherlands without Valérie Trierweiler. Accompanied by several of his ministers, he gave a joint press conference with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in The Hague where, inevitably, he was once again asked if Valérie Trierweiler remained the First Lady of France. His answer: "She is doing better and is currently resting at La Lanterne".  

Presidential retreat La Lanterne, Versailles

In France too the pressure is mounting. When Interior Minister Manuel Valls was questioned about his responsibility for the safety of Mr. Hollande who made repeated nightly visits to Ms. Gayet on a scooter with only one bodyguard, he said that at no time the president's security had been compromised. At the same time, Claude Bartolone, the powerful president of the French Parliament, expressed his hope that Mr. Hollande and Ms. Trierweiler will soon be able to find a way out of the impasse.

Valérie Trierweiler has asked Mr. Hollande for "urgent clarification" of her situation and, after eight days in La Pitié-Salpêtrière, has left the hospital for La Lanterne, the French presidential country house in Versailles for "further rest". As France's First Lady she has an office at the Elysée Palace with a personal staff of five including a chauffeur, paid for with public funds. She also lives at the Elysée and in an initial response has indicated that she has "no intention to move".

Her impetuous nature and jealous disposition have not won her many friends, but her "cold dismissal" in the glare of the media after seven years of cohabitation did not play well, even as a private matter. More publicly, Hollande has been criticized for questionable behavior unworthy of high office, disregard for his personal safety in his pursuit of amorous trysts, and the naiveté of his unrealistic claim to a right of privacy "accorded to all private citizens". As Le Figaro put it: He is no longer a private citizen and owes the French people the decorum attached to his office. Gérard Courtois in Le Monde went even further in speaking of the "inquiétante légèreté" of the president, his distraction from matters of state at a critical time, and "le ridicule de la situation", adding that the president has a professional duty to represent France at home and abroad in the best possible light.

During his January 14 press conference, Hollande promised to answer the First Lady question before February 11th. He is now under pressure to find a quick resolution of this private problem and present it to a panting press that is not likely to let him get away twice with a plea for privacy. 

Confronted with a low approval rating in the polls, severe economic problems, and a lack of confidence in his policies, Hollande has a lot of challenges. But perhaps the toughest one of all:  the woman scorned who awaits his decision.

Oh yes, as for that Responsibility Pact...  Naah, you don't really want to know about that. Not until the hottest show in town is over and some sort of normality has returned. Stay tuned ...