After a blistering week in which French President Francois Hollande made a humiliating U-turn on anti-terror measures and faced massive protests over labour reforms, his prospects for re-election next year look increasingly bleak. The 61-year-old Socialist leader has staked his presidency on a pledge to rein in France's stubbornly-high unemployment, but his proposed remedy has sparked waves of often violent demonstrations.
Hundreds of thousands of workers and students braved heavy rains across the country on Thursday to protest against the reforms, seen by opponents as too pro-business. The protests, which are set to continue this month, came a day after Hollande announced he was scrapping an initiative to strip convicted terrorists of French nationality.
In absence of an agreement between the two houses of parliament, the president was forced to humiliatingly abandon a measure he had hoped would burnish his credentials as tough on terror in the wake of November's jihadist attacks on Paris. Thursday's polls showed the approval rating of the most unpopular president in modern French history sinking to a new low of 15 percent. Another poll on Wednesday suggested he would not even reach the second-round run-off in the May 2017 election.
"The president's popularity has fallen continuously for the past two years, but in the past few weeks there has been an acceleration in the disaffection within his own camp," said political scientist Bruno Jeanbart of the Opinionway polling institute. Only two in five of those who voted for Hollande in the first round of the 2012 vote that brought him to power still support him, Jeanbart said, describing his chance of re-election as "virtually non-existent". In the face of robust objections from both opposition and Socialist backbenchers, Hollande was forced to abandon constitutional changes that would have allowed dual nationals convicted of terrorism to be stripped of their French citizenship.
Polls suggested most of the country supported the plan, notably after it emerged that six of the 10 known Paris attackers had French passports. But critics argued it would create two categories of French citizens, a sensitive issue in a country where millions hold two passports. It even sparked the resignation of justice minister Christiane Taubira, herself a native of French Guiana.
Hollande's hopes for a signature achievement on the economic front have also been shattered. Two weeks ago, the government bowed to pressure from the street and the Socialist Party's left flank, watering down labour reform proposals so that they apply only to large firms. But diehard labour and student unions are piling on the pressure for the government to scrap the bill altogether, calling two more protests on April 5 and April 9.