Macron Promises ‘French Renaissance’ for 2018

French President Emmanuel Macron during an annual New Year address. (AFP)
French President Emmanuel Macron during an annual New Year address. (AFP)
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Macron Promises ‘French Renaissance’ for 2018

French President Emmanuel Macron during an annual New Year address. (AFP)
French President Emmanuel Macron during an annual New Year address. (AFP)

French President Emmanuel Macron vowed on Sunday to pursue his reform agenda for 2018, while pledging a “French renaissance” for the new year.

During his New Year television address, he said that he would rapidly push through economic and political changes in France over the coming months.

The televised New Year’s speech was the 40-year-old president’s first year-end address following his electoral victory in May. Macron made clear he would tackle even potentially thorny domestic issues, like a new immigration law.

“I will ensure all voices, including contrary ones, are heard. But all the same, I will not stop acting,” Macron said, seated a marble table in his office at the Elysee Palace. The formula of the speech was largely in keeping with the one favored by many of his predecessors, despite speculation Macron would seek to shake up France’s New Year presidential rite of passage too.

The French government plans changes in 2018 to immigration laws that have sown unease even among some members of Macron’s Republic on the Move (LREM) movement. They include a tougher line on deporting migrants who have been refused asylum.

Macron vowed on Sunday that the country would continue to welcome refugees and immigrants, though he added France could not do so “without rules.”

An unapologetic pro-European, Macron beat far-right, euroskeptic National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the election run-off and has since sought to kickstart a drive towards greater euro zone integration.

He appealed on Sunday directly to people across Europe to step up and have more of a say in shaping the future of the European Union and giving it a “jolt”, including through citizen consultations.

“We need to recover a European ambition to be a more sovereign, more united, more democratic Europe,” Macron said. “I need for us, together, not to give way on anything, neither to nationalists nor to the skeptics.”

Echoing an address earlier on Sunday by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron said Germany and France in particular would strive to work together.

Announcing a "grand social project" in 2018 that would cover the health sector and housing for the homeless among other areas, Macron also extolled the virtues of work as a way of "helping everyone find their place" in society.

Lamenting the "irreconcilable divisions that are corroding our country," he appealed to the French to not reason solely in terms of what the traditionally protectionist French state could do for them.

With parties to his left and right divided or scrambling to regroup under new leaders, Macron will benefit from a window of opportunity at home to push through more reforms in 2018 as the opposition flounders, analysts say.

Macron’s popularity ratings have recently recovered from a slump as he tries to carve out an international profile and starts delivering on campaign pledges.

But his next steps also carry risks as he seeks changes that could spawn more of a popular backlash than he has previously faced, including a proposed overhaul of unemployment benefits which aims to tighten conditions for these subsidies.

Detractors have labeled the former investment banker the “president of the rich”, and he also faces the challenge of maintaining a grip over his young party.

France's youngest-ever president enters 2018 on a high note however, with polls showing voters warming to him again after having soured on him in his first months in office.

A Harris Interactive poll published Friday gave him a 52 percent approval rating, up seven points.

The turnaround has been attributed both to the weakness of the opposition, to his record in implementing his campaign pledges and his leadership on the international stage.

In his first months in office, he pushed through labor and tax reforms with only mild resistance and played good cop and bad cop with US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin.

He has also benefited from an upswing on the economic front.

Europe's second-biggest economy is projected to grow by 1.9 percent in 2017 -- up from a previous estimate of 1.6 percent -- and unemployment is at its lowest level in three years, albeit still at relatively high 9.4 percent.



Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
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Bangladesh Protest Leaders Taken from Hospital by Police

People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)
People take part in a song march to protest against the indiscriminate killings and mass arrest in Dhaka on July 26, 2024. (AFP)

Bangladeshi police detectives on Friday forced the discharge from hospital of three student protest leaders blamed for deadly unrest, taking them to an unknown location, staff told AFP.

Nahid Islam, Asif Mahmud and Abu Baker Majumder are all members of Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing this month's street rallies against civil service hiring rules.

At least 195 people were killed in the ensuing police crackdown and clashes, according to an AFP count of victims reported by police and hospitals, in some of the worst unrest of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's tenure.

All three were patients at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, and at least two of them said their injuries were caused by torture in earlier police custody.

"They took them from us," Gonoshasthaya hospital supervisor Anwara Begum Lucky told AFP. "The men were from the Detective Branch."

She added that she had not wanted to discharge the student leaders but police had pressured the hospital chief to do so.

Islam's elder sister Fatema Tasnim told AFP from the hospital that six plainclothes detectives had taken all three men.

The trio's student group had suspended fresh protests at the start of this week, saying they had wanted the reform of government job quotas but not "at the expense of so much blood".

The pause was due to expire earlier on Friday but the group had given no indication of its future course of action.

Islam, 26, the chief coordinator of Students Against Discrimination, told AFP from his hospital bed on Monday that he feared for his life.

He said that two days beforehand, a group of people identifying themselves as police detectives blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to an unknown location.

Islam added that he had come to his senses the following morning on a roadside in Dhaka.

Mahmud earlier told AFP that he had also been detained by police and beaten at the height of last week's unrest.

Three senior police officers in Dhaka all denied that the trio had been taken from the hospital and into custody on Friday.

- Garment tycoon arrested -

Police told AFP on Thursday that they had arrested at least 4,000 people since the unrest began last week, including 2,500 in Dhaka.

On Friday police said they had arrested David Hasanat, the founder and chief executive of one of Bangladesh's biggest garment factory enterprises.

His Viyellatex Group employs more than 15,000 people according to its website, and its annual turnover was estimated at $400 million by the Daily Star newspaper last year.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police inspector Abu Sayed Miah said Hasanat and several others were suspected of financing the "anarchy, arson and vandalism" of last week.

Bangladesh makes around $50 billion in annual export earnings from the textile trade, which services leading global brands including H&M, Gap and others.

Student protests began this month after the reintroduction in June of a scheme reserving more than half of government jobs for certain candidates.

With around 18 million young people in Bangladesh out of work, according to government figures, the move deeply upset graduates facing an acute jobs crisis.

Critics say the quota is used to stack public jobs with loyalists to Hasina's Awami League.

- 'Call to the nation' -

The Supreme Court cut the number of reserved jobs on Sunday but fell short of protesters' demands to scrap the quotas entirely.

Hasina has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is also accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Hasina continued a tour of government buildings that had been ransacked by protesters, on Friday visiting state broadcaster Bangladesh Television, which was partly set ablaze last week.

"Find those who were involved in this," she said, according to state news agency BSS.

"Cooperate with us to ensure their punishment. I am making this call to the nation."