Disaffected and disillusioned voters were throwing out nine European leaders who prescribed austerity measures as the bitter pill to cure their ailing economies and manage their debt crisis. Nowhere was this demonstrated in more foreboding fashion for Sarkozy than in Greece with the unceremonious fall of Prime Minister George Papandreou last November.
After all, Sarkozy was not just Europe’s poster boy for the cocktail of austerity measures (most notably cutting public benefits and government services) that have become so universally unpopular, he and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany effectively concocted them.
On the other hand, Hollande predicated his candidacy on a completely different panacea, focusing more on increasing government spending and raising taxes (on the filthy rich) to stimulate economic growth than on cutting services (to the chronically poor) to lower government debt. He even pledged to renegotiate the Sarkozy-Merkel debt-reduction “fiscal pact,” mocking it by offering a government-spending “growth pact” instead.
(“Hollande Defeats Sarkozy for President of France,” The iPINIONS Journal, May 7, 2012)
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