member's letter - September 2010 Letter circulated in the Tenth District of Essonne
Dear
On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of French people marched through the streets to show their opposition to the current pension reform. This is an important movement and sends a strong warning to the government. This government and the presidential majority, meanwhile, are trying to believe that there are those who are for reform - they - and those who are against any reform. Nothing is further from the truth. It must of course finance reform our pension system so that its existence does not appear in danger, so that it takes better account of the career and painful situation of inequality but not what type of reform proposed by the government. How can we accept a project as unjust, which places 90% of the funding required only on employees? How to validate a "reform" that they say history but will not solve the problem of financing our pensions beyond 2018? A reform that will further increase the bill for unemployment insurance, sending the former-future retirees point to the ANPE, in a country where senior citizens can not find work?
These objections were early brought to the attention of government by the unions and leftist parties, the Socialist Party first. But if dialogue apparently there was, it was a dialogue of the deaf. At no time did the majority wanted to work to build consensus, merely to live a semblance of dialogue, and not applicable to budge an inch on their positions. The project was already tied up in the early discussions, it is the same as the Prime Minister intends to force through today. The alleged concessions announced Wednesday by the President of the Republic further demonstrate that state of mind: nothing has changed about the decline of the legal age of retirement. Retirement at age 60, in the spirit of the president, is already dead and buried. And all this to satisfy the sacrosanct "rating agencies", these companies private, out of control scientific or democratic, that award good and bad points to countries to manage their finances public. We must clean up the deficit widened since 8 years in power by the right, then we try to make up accounts, quickly, no matter how - by using once again on the back of the French middle and working classes.
After a day of protest on Tuesday, the government and the president can no longer pretend they saw nothing of the anger rising in our country. And this is only the beginning. Mobilization must continue on all fronts. It will continue. With my fellow members of the opposition, I am fighting tooth and nail to the Assembly, not to let this project. And if this reform is still in place, and if the left returns to lead our country in 2012 - what I hope - it must firmly commit to cancel. Because it is the inalienable right of every citizen to enjoy his retirement in good health, because nothing can justify the killing was at work, especially when the financial efforts required only weigh on the shoulders of a few, carefully and save on capital income and the French the most fortunate.
Again, the mobilization of citizens must not falter. I know that strike is difficult, financially, professionally, and that many of you - the polls show - strongly support the protest, even if they do not paraded Tuesday. Another reform is possible. Do not give up. If the government imposes its text still in Parliament, despite the anger of the country, then we will require that assumes its responsibilities and organize a referendum to see all the French.
Madam, if I decided to write to you today is because the moment is grave and serious consequences for your rights as a citizen , starting with that of healthy aging. You can count on me to defend your side.
Julien Dray
