PARIS, 17 December 2003 — President Jacques Chirac is expected to announce a ban on wearing headscarves in French schools today in a speech aimed at reaching out to core conservative supporters three months before regional elections.
The televised message from the Elysee Palace comes as the far-right National Front threatens to exploit Chirac’s recent slide in the polls and pull off a repeat of its shock gains in the 2002 presidential election.
The contents of the speech have been kept under wraps but allies have dropped hints Chirac will follow the guidance of an official report last week that proposed a ban on headscarves and other religious symbols in France’s state schools. “We must give public servants the legal means to enforce the rules,” Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who was due to meet Chirac to discuss the speech yesterday, told Le Parisien daily.
“It’s better to do as much as you can without a law, but you have to plug the legal loopholes,” added Raffarin of the current situation in which schools decide how to punish pupils whose veils, skullcaps or crosses contravene secular principles.
The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) appealed to Chirac in an open letter this week not to proceed with a law it said would victimize the country’s five million Muslims. But not only does Chirac look ready to ignore that appeal, there were signs he will reject the reported call to create new holidays to respect holy days of Islam and other minority faiths after the idea was rubbished by top members of his UMP party.
Race relations are in the spotlight in France where young Muslims of North African origin have been blamed for a rise in anti-Semitic violence in poor suburbs. Analysts link the phenomenon to anger over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Chirac’s poll ratings shot to record highs as the French applauded his opposition to the Iraq war. In recent weeks they have fallen back amid criticism of his economic reform course and failure to curb unemployment of about 10 percent and rising.
A survey by pollster Louis Harris this week put his support at 45 percent, down two points on last month. Raffarin, who is in charge of the day-to-day running of government, saw his score mired at 33 percent, the lowest since his appointment.
March’s regional elections are seen as the main mid-term test of Chirac’s second presidency and his government’s ability to see through painful reforms of the welfare system, knock public finances back into order and pursue major privatizations.
With the French left licking its wounds after its crushing defeat in the 2002 elections, pollsters say the main threat to Chirac will again come from National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, surprise runner-up in last year’s presidential contest.
