French press review 19 August 2016

France braces for divisive debate over controversial Burkini swimsuit, New job figures hand President Hollande huge boost as he prepares to compete in Socialist party primaries and tips for the absent-minded holiday makers who misplace everything while on vacation.

 Several right-wing newspapers say they expect President Francois Hollande to draw political gains from the news that the jobless rate fell by 0.3 points in the second quarter to 9.6 percent of the working age population according to the statistics bureau Insee.

Les Echos

With just eight months to go to the 2017 presidential elections where job creation is expected to be a key issue, the economic newspaper believes everything seems to have been done to force a reversal of the figures.

Doing everything to change your political destiny is one of the missions politicians assign themselves, satirises the right-wing publication. According to the paper, it remains to be seen if the drop in the unemployment rate is sustainable and whether the figures will open the way for a new economic landscape.

Les Echos floats the opinion that this unfortunately will not be the case, arguing that the pressure of joblessness will be strongly felt with renewed fury once the Presidential elections are over.

Le Figaro

Monsieur Hollande had set the reversal of double digit unemployment as the pre-condition of seeking re-election.The right-wing publication says this is unprecedented for a sitting President to run in party primaries .

According to Le Figaro, going back to his party is the price he has to pay for failing to stimulate the economy as promised to his electorate. Hollande commands no respect in the eyes of his electorate which he deceived more than once, by changing political direction, concludes the right-wing publication.

L'Humanité

According to the Communist daily, the upcoming Socialist party primaries are nothing but the dreadful scheme by a monarch restricted to the helm of an "agonising Republic" desperate to transform progressive forces into miserable watchers of a democracy that has ran out of steam.

The paper warns that the country could experience a "feat of convulsion" due to the five-year term of office which it describes as a booby trap set to wreck the French Republic. There is very little time remaining to disable it says the daily.

Libération

The left-leaning newspaper takes up the raging controversy over the Islamic Burkini, the full-body swimsuit, banned by a handful of French mayors, which Prime Minister Manuel Valls described as "incompatible with France and the values of the Republic".

As his remarks propelled the row from the beaches into the political front benches, Libé claims that after the prohibition of the Islamic veil in schools and public places, the ban on the Burkini, makes France the most restrictive democracy in the world.

Instead of "declaring a state of textile emergency" the government ought to wage a political battle against fundamentalism, by supporting Republican Islam, by firmly applying the principles of secularism and showcasing the quiet force of a welcoming, yet strict Republic.

Le Parisien

The paper takes to task the French who have a reputation of being light-headed and end up misplacing everything including the most essential of their personal belongings while on vacation.

According to Le Parisien, the absent-minded do have a fairly good chance of finding their articles after a guarded tour it took to the lost and found store operated by police in downtown Paris. Every misplaced article is there, says Le Parisien, from an identity card dating back to 1892, to a wedding dress.