38 Europe The Economist November 20th 2021
things are falling apart? There is no single
explanation. In a country that boasts four
anticapitalist presidential candidates,
one reason could be a lingering French
suspicion of the financial gains that eco
nomic recovery brings. The government
has spent heavily to keep jobs and busi
nesses going during the pandemic, in or
der to avoid layoffs and bankruptcies, and
to protect incomes. Living standards rose
in 2020 and will do so again in 2021. But
this policy is now also helping those with
investments in such firms. The saved jobs
are taken for granted whereas the rewarded
shareholders are regarded in some quar
ters as undeserving beneficiaries. Mr Mac
ron still struggles to shrug off his label of
président des riches.
It could also be that the structure of
government builds in disappointment. A
strong central state, which the French dig
nify with a capital letter (État), headed by a
powerful presidency, encourages exces
sive expectations of both. The conflict and
compromise that characterises the reality
of government is a source of particular dis
satisfaction, as is the complexity of the glo
balised world. The difficulties that France
has experienced securing microchips for
its carcomponents industry, say, or halt
ing migrant flows, are sometimes seen as
not merely the result of global supply
chain jams or internationalmigration
pressures, but a form of emasculation and
wounded national pride.
A further answer may be that, as Clau
dia Senik, an economist at the Paris School
of Economics, puts it: “The French have an
ambivalent relationship to happiness.” A
poll this week suggested that 78% feel hap
py about their own lives, but 60% are con
vinced that their country is going down
hill. Being idealists, the French find that
the real world always disappoints. Taught
from a young age to adopt un esprit critique,
they delight in disapproval. Last year, as
covid first spread, a poll suggested that on
ly 39% of the French thought that their gov
ernment was managing the crisis well,
compared with 74% in Germany and 69%
in Britain. Bleak is chic.
Perhaps most important, ahead of any
French presidential election the stirring of
indignation and the promise of salvation is
a practised political art. François Mitter
rand campaigned as “the tranquil force” in
his successful bid for the presidency in
1981, hinting at the chaos he would calm.
Jacques Chirac promised in 1995 to mend
the “social fracture” that he claimed threat
ened French unity. Mr Macron was unusu
al by campaigning in 2017 in tones of opti
mism. As covid cases rise, supply chains
clog up and punitive winter heating bills
arrive in the letterbox, there is still plenty
that could go wrong.Buteven if it doesn’t,
it will suit his opponentsof all stripes to
lay the doom on thick.nE
ighteenyearsagothismonth,the
35yearold Mikheil Saakashvili, an
Americaneducated Georgian politician,
led the first “colour revolution” in the
countries of the former Soviet Union.
When he subsequently became president
he turned around the corrupt and failing
republic, although he was also much
criticised for hogging and abusing pow
er. Now he is in prison fighting for his
life after seven weeks on hungerstrike.
Mr Saakashvili stepped down in 2013
after his party lost an election, surren
dering power to Bidzina Ivanishvili, a
reclusive billionaire who founded and
still controls the ruling Georgian Dreamparty.MrIvanishvilichasedhimout of
the country and stripped him of his
citizenship. Hated by the Kremlin, which
fought a short war with Georgia in 2008,
Mr Saakashvili spent the next eight years
in Ukraine, where he became prominent.
Last month he returned to Georgia,
only to be promptly arrested. In a video
released by the government, he was
shown being dragged, half naked, into a
prison hospital. Mr Saakashvili has been
denied the right to attend his own trial. A
member of the European Parliament
hoping to see him was turned away at the
border.
Mass protests over Mr Saakashvili’s
treatment are growing by the day. Ten
members of parliament are also on hun
ger strike and his doctor says the former
president could suffer a heart attack at
any moment. His supporters say he has
been denied access to proper medical
care, increasing the risk to his life. If he
dies, Mr Saakashvili will become a mar
tyr. If he lives, it will be a rare example of
successful resistance to Mr Ivanishvili.
This is the latest of many signs that
Georgia is moving backwards. This year
alone the government has arrested the
head of the opposition, hacked the
phones of humanrights activists and
foreign ambassadors, and turned down
an euloan after backtracking on an
agreement promising judicial and elec
toral reform. It has handled the covid19
crisis badly. But its treatment of an ad
mired, if flawed, former president could
be its worst blunder yet.GeorgiaCaucasian degeneration
TBILISI
Aformer president, near death in jail, defies the current oneThere for MishaPolandandBelarusBorderline case
T
he migrantshad nowhere to go. Be
hind them stood Belarus’s brutal secu
rity officers, before them rows of Polish
soldiers. Mostly Iraqi Kurds, they had been
lured to Minsk, Belarus’s capital, with
promises of passage to Germany, then
dumped in the forests, told to breach the
border fence and beaten if they did not. On
November 16th the Belarusians moved
hundreds of them to a border crossing.
Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’s dictator,hoped that by provoking violence he could
embarrass Poland and divide the eu, which
imposed sanctions after he stole an elec
tion. When migrants threw stones, the
Poles sprayed them with water cannon.
Mr Lukashenko’s use of helpless mi
grants as propaganda tools is a problem for
the eu, but mostly not in the way he hopes.
Rather, his border crisis complicates the
European Commission’s conflict with Po
land over the rule of law. Since coming toWARSAW
The eu wants to help Poland with migrants but punish it for judicial abuses