French press review 18 March 2015

An interview with a prominent Russian opposition leader, the upcoming discussions by the French cabinet on extending the powers of police to fight terrorism and this Sunday’s departmental elections are some of the topics featured in today’s French newspapers.

Le Monde this morning carries an interview with Alexei Navalny, the main political opponent of Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Navalny says categorically that the assassination in Moscow late last month of his friend, Boris Nemtsov, could not have been carried out without the authorisation of the Kremlin. He explains that, since Nemtsov was under surveillance by the Russian intelligence services, it is impossible that the authorities were unaware of the plan to kill him.

Navalny says they either worked in concert with Nemtsov's murderers, or they turned a blind eye to what was going on. He accepts that Putin would not have ordered Nemtsov's death directly, but believes that the Russian president's informal demands to his security staff, and especially to his uneasy allies in Chechnya, never fall on deaf ears.

“Blind eyes,” “deaf ears,” significant expressions when one is considering the way Putin's Russia is being run.

Navalny says Nemtsov was assassinated because he had produced a detailed report on the presence of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, and also as a sort of general warning to all those who have the gall to challenge Putin.

How far should the state go to protect its citizens from the danger of terrorist attack?

Tomorrow, the French cabinet will begin its consideration of a proposed law intended to extend the powers of the police in the fight against terrorism.

Up to now, anti-terrorist units have worked in a judicial wasteland, where the end has been understood to justify the means, and no one was asking too many questions.

The proposed law would give the police roughly the same scope for action, but with the full support of the law, even immunity from prosecution is some cases where investigations go tragically wrong. And this has got human rights groups and the legal profession deeply worried.

The police would also be given extended powers in the realm of telephone tapping and internet snooping, zones which are currently, technically at least, under the control of the judiciary.

The problem, says La Croix, is to balance citizen's rights and security concerns, never an easy equation.

Left-leaning Libération wonders where the money used to build French mosques comes from.

The government is unwilling to admit that there's a problem; yet, for practically everyone concerned, local politicians, mayors, the security services, the Muslim population itself, there is a clear and worrying discrepancy between the amounts being spent and the resources of the communities spending them.

France needs twice as many mosques as it currently has. Those hoping to build them frequently encounter resistance from other local communities. Local authorities are caught between the rock of discrimination and the hard place of voter resentment.

Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are some of the big official donors, says Libé, but a lot of money is collected overseas on a private basis and it's the sources of that money, and the obligations that come with it, that are causing most concern.

Is some of the foreign money coming from sources which actively promote Islamic fundamentalism, and would the state do better to put an end to such influence by itself financing the building of places of worship?

Currently, the 1905 law separating church and state expressly forbids any such intervention.

Interestingly, a Libération opinion poll shows that 79 per cent of French people questioned would be in favour of changing the 1905 law to enable the state to pay for the building or repair of mosques, but only 54 per cent would want to see state money being spent on Christian building projects.

Communist L'Humanité says Sunday's departmental elections here in France, which most voters seem to be viewing with bottomless disinterest, are actually crucial since the departments are the link between central funding and most socially useful projects, especially for the vulnerable.

After 30 years of decentralisation, the record of the departments in helping the excluded, the dependent and the handicapped has been exemplary, according to an audit carried out by the National Social Action Observatory.

Right wing daily Le Figaro also looks forward to the weekend elections, predicting another rout for the ruling socialists and suggesting the Nicolas Sarkozy will use the electoral boost his UMP is likely to gain as a springboard for further changes to his conservative outfit.