By Leigh Thomas
PARIS: Conservative French politicians lost no time on Friday blaming the Socialist government for lapses that let a gunman drive a heavy truck into a crowd, pushing security back up the political agenda.
With presidential and national elections less than a year away, opposition politicians made little effort to put on shows of national unity seen after other recent attacks.
“We can’t cry for victims every six months ... Soon things are going to have to be said, not for the sake of saying them, but for acting,” conservative former president Nicolas Sarkozy said on visit to Nice on Friday.
Security hardliner Christian Estrosi, president of the Riviera region in which Nice lies, asked how the truck could have been able to plough through crowds gathered to watch fireworks on Nice’s beachside Promenade des Anglais, killing at least 84 people.
“As far as I’m concerned, I demand answers, and not the usual stuff,” Estrosi said on BFM TV on Friday morning, questioning whether the government had provided enough national police officers for the fireworks display.
Estrosi, who has warned in the past of a fifth column of “Islamo-fascists” operating in France, happened to write to President Francois Hollande on the eve of the massacre demanding more funds for police.
As mayor of Nice until last month, Estrosi turned the city into one of France’s most heavily policed with nearly 600 municipal officers and other agents in a city of 342,000 people.
It is also one of the most closely monitored with 1,200 video surveillance cameras in public places.
SECURITY OBSESSION
Security is a hot-button issue in Estrosi’s Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region where the far-right National Front has made deep inroads on concerns about immigration, crime and high unemployment.
Estrosi only won the regional presidency in December because left-wing voters were left in a runoff with a choice between him and Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the youngest family member of the far-right National Front political dynasty.
The temptation to push a hard line on security will be huge for likely right-wing candidates in next year’s presidential election as they struggle to beat back National Front leader Marine Le Pen.
“If everything had already been done, the drama would not have happened” in Nice, said Bordeaux mayor Alain Juppe, who is preparing a presidential bid.
When France hosted the Euro soccer championship this month, Estrosi wanted face-recognition technology to be used for people to be allowed into special fan zones, but was refused access to national police record databases to make it work.
Hours after the attack in Nice, Hollande tore up just-announced plans to end a state of emergency in place since the Nov. 13 shootings and bombings in Paris, instead extending it another three months.
Eric Ciotti, a conservative lawmaker and Estrosi’s former deputy, said the state of emergency should be made permanent as long as the threat of attacks persists.
Hollande said army and gendarme reserves would be mobilised to help increase patrols and relieve weary soldiers and officers who have seen little respite in recent months.
A parliamentary inquiry into last November’s attacks called for a major overhaul of the country’s security apparatus this month with a national counterterrorism agency to oversee the fight against militants.
Police union representative Denis Jacob said that ultimately responsibility for any lapses in Nice had to be shared as it was one of France’s most carefully policed cities.
“No matter how many soldiers are deployed, a crazy guy can take a truck and drive it into the crowd anywhere and anytime and kill many people,” he said.
(Additional reporting by Emmanuel Jarry in Paris and Matthias Galante in Nice; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Andrew Heavens)
Reuters
