Yesterday concluded a massive public consultation across the whole of France.

The French were asking themselves about the privatisation of the postal service, La Poste. When I say “asking themselves” I mean it literally; the whole project was a mock referendum.

The mock referendum was designed to show support for a real referendum, which is turn is designed to block the government’s plans.

The project was organised by a “national committee” comprising of 62 different associations, unions and political parties and has already seen popular support. In Nice alone, there were nearly 1000 votes against the government. (I think the exact figure was about 9,634.)

The campaign poster found all over town

Since the start of the year, around 3 post offices have closed every day and 7400 jobs have been axed.

Nicolas Sarkozy has given two main arguments to justify his privatisation proposal; Europe and Finance. He pretends that it is the European Union which is imposing changes on the monopolisation on the delivery of post weighing less than 20 grams. This argument is false. The EU has in no way tried to change the status of the service-operator, much less its privatisation. Financially, La Poste has several other means available to it than privatisation to fund itself.

I don’t have the figures for the whole of France yet, but it looks like another Sarkoscheme that will be stopped dead by a self-made referendum.

Other countries should learn from this; democracy isn’t just about voting once every 4/5 years.