Published Monday, March 3, 2008 at 14:30
by
yoan.abiven 
in European democracy & diversity (1179 views and 4 comments)
At long
last, France has joined the group of sensible nations to have
ratified the Lisbon treaty!
This time though, it chose not to risk asking the French people
either through a vote or a referendum. Thus President Sarkozy
kept his electoral promise of choosing to go the parliamentary
way. And as if nothing had changed since the French rejection of
the constitutional treaty in 2005, all the 'narrow-minded
Frenchies' of back then rose up in arms more or less exactly as
last time. The campaign for the French presidential elections and
the 'forced' bipartisanship of that particular moment in time had
silenced them for a while.
The Socialist Party lost itself in its own contradictions,
thereby illustrating the old saying that if there is no solution,
then maybe there is no problem. This may account for the rebirth
of a true political centre in France. The Left has at least
remained united on one thing: it called for a new referendum,
some of its members so that they can relive the great feeling of
having said yes the first time, the others, of having said no, I
guess, but beyond that all Socialists have remained good friends
and comrades.
The tricky thing about this whole story is that those in favour
of a referendum are not totally wrong from the perspective of a
good democratic...
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