RUTHFULLY YOURS

Emmanuel Macron’s victory in France’s presidential election this year marked the triumph of a steady, centrist hand over the far-right nationalism of Marine Le Pen. His presidency, moreover, was supposed to be “Jupiterian,” characterized by an aloof, dignified posture designed to exalt his office in the eyes of legislators and the public. Yet the storms and harsh realities intrinsic to governing have damaged Macron’s image.

The young president’s popularity has dropped rapidly in opinion polls. One recent survey revealed only 36 percent of French citizens were satisfied with his performance. Macron is now “more unpopular than his predecessor Francois Hollande — himself very unpopular — was after the same length of time in office,” reports The Independent. His popularity has declined about 30 points since June. A separate poll, conducted by YouGov, also found his approval rating had fallen to 36 percent.

The Jupiterian president is learning that he can’t distance himself from the consequences of trying to enact reforms. On the contrary, Macron’s ambitious agenda is forcing him down from his throne.

Consider a structural reform that Macron is proposing for the French government: He wants to streamline the law-making process by cutting the number of delegates in both houses of parliament by one-third. “We need long-term perspective,” Macron said, “but we must also act quickly and swiftly, therefore the shuffle between the two houses of parliament must be simplified.” If necessary, Macron will put the reform up for a vote by the French people. Some see this as a sign of authoritarian tendencies.

Spending and tax cuts have proven just as controversial for Macron. While Macron had hoped to institute tax cuts soon after the election in order to boost the moribund French economy, financial realities have stood in the way. Macron also wants to reduce France’s budget deficit, but to do that and cut taxes requires spending cuts. He decided to cut defense spending, a move that has been met with the disapproval of many French citizens. France’s top general resigned, and another criticized Macron’s “juvenile authoritarianism.” As it stands, Macron’s tax cuts have been delayed, his spending cuts have met much consternation, and his relationship with the military has frayed.

Other reforms in Macron’s agenda have met concerted resistance. A proposal to cut a housing benefit, which would affect hundreds of thousands of French students, met vigorous opposition from students’ unions. “Disgruntlement among students is a thorny issue,” reports the Guardian, “because the government is seeking to avoid students joining potential protests against Macron’s proposed changes to labour laws this autumn.” Macron’s labor reforms are intended to make it easier to hire and fire employees by revising a complex set of regulations.

HONG KONG—A student icon of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement was effectively disqualified from running for political office for five years after being jailed over protests in 2014 that drew world-wide attention.

The imprisonment of Joshua Wong, who became the skinny, bespectacled teenage face of the 79-day demonstrations demanding freer elections, is the latest move by authorities here to sweep away opponents of Beijing’s tightening control over the city. Since the protests, Mr. Wong has co-founded a new political party and has become a focal point for democracy campaigners, especially among the city’s youth.

The Court of Appeal sentenced Mr. Wong to six months in prison for taking part in an unlawful assembly in 2014, when protesters scaled security gates to access a square outside government headquarters, sparking what became known as the Occupy protests. Mr. Wong was originally sentenced to community service, which he completed, before the city’s Department of Justice filed a rare appeal, arguing that the sentence was too lenient. The harsher sentence means Mr. Wong is barred from running in local government elections until at least 2022.

Two other student leaders, Nathan Law and Alex Chow, were sentenced to eight months and seven months in prison, respectively.

Hong Kong authorities are increasingly using the legal system to silence dissent, having successfully disqualified six other pro-democracy legislators in a separate case over oath-taking, damaging the bloc’s ability to veto legislation.

The moves pave the way for controversial laws to be enacted on national security, compulsory patriotic education for schoolchildren, and, for the first time, allowing mainland Chinese laws to be enforced in a new train station for a high-speed rail line connecting Hong Kong to the mainland.

“Beijing and the Hong Kong Secretary for Justice are licking their chops at the moment,’’ said Jerome A. Cohen, director of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University. “Of course they will be “political prisoners … Their actions were political, and so was the government’s prosecution.’’

Mr. Wong and his two fellow student protest leaders “were convicted not because they exercised their civil liberties but because their relevant conduct in the protest broke the law,’’ a spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said in an email. “There is absolutely no basis to imply any political motive on the part of the Department of Justice in this case.’’

Mr. Wong, who turns 21 in October, rocketed to fame in his teens by organizing a 2012 rally that led the government to shelve plans to introduce a pro-China curriculum in Hong Kong schools.

During protests that paralyzed city streets in 2014, Mr. Wong was one of the first to camp out on highways and was a fiery voice at nightly rallies. That year, he was also on the cover of Time Magazine—the week he turned 18—as “The Face of Protest.”

Turkey has now become the first and only NATO member state that teaches “jihad” in its schools. Although the Turkish government claims that “jihad” means a “spiritual inner struggle for salvation,” the official Turkish dictionary defines it as a “war fought in the name of religion.”

“Why would a young man, indeed a young woman, would want to return to a country where there are 50,000 people in prison, including 200 journalists, opposition media is gagged, women are second class citizens, and where Darwin’s theory of evolution has been taken off academic curriculum because it contradicts teachings of Islam? To these bright young kids, returning to Turkey must appear like hopping on H. G. Wells’s ‘Time Machine’ and travelling back a few centuries.” — Fuad Kavur, London-based Turkish-British film producer.

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, draws such a rosy picture of his war-torn country that his audiences might think the world’s youth, in envy, should be flocking to Turkey to breathe an air of academic excellence and freedoms. On the other hand, however, he complains of a massive brain drain in the Muslim world, including Turkey, heading to the Western countries, which he explicitly despises. A gross contradiction? Just an Islamist’s usual ideological impasse.

In a recent speech, Erdogan said that the Muslim world has been losing students to the West in a brain drain, and that this intellectual emigration must be prevented:

“On top of that, we are transferring very serious amounts of money to Western countries for this. After these students complete their academic studies, we naturally expect them to return to their countries and serve their own people. But most of the time, those finishing their schools do not return to their homelands, but stay where they received education”.

Erdogan’s diagnosis is correct. According to Cumhuriyet, an independent Turkish daily newspaper, the number of Turkish students seeking study abroad has doubled every year since 2009. At Robert College in Istanbul, a private high school, 151 of 196 seniors recently applied to study abroad. And according to the state-run news agency Anadolu, some 90,000 Turkish students go abroad annually, and spend about $1.5 billion for education. Turkey ranks 11th among countries with students getting an education abroad, according to the World Bank. Top preferred education destinations include Britain, the United States, Malta, Canada, Australia and Germany — ironically, all of them non-Muslim countries. Turkey sends more students to the United States than any other European country.

At Robert College in Istanbul, a private high school, 151 of 196 seniors recently applied to study abroad. (Image source: Wikipedia)

That is hardly surprising in a country where average schooling is a mere 6.5 years. Qualitatively, too, education standards are extremely poor in Turkey. The results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) education test have revealed some of the most pressing problems in Turkish education. According to the PISA findings in 2016, Turkey dropped from 44th place to 49th (out of 72 countries surveyed), compared to the last test in 2012.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that the number of Turkish 15-year-olds who scored below average on the triennial PISA test is three times higher than the number of students who scored below average in more successful countries. Some 31.2% of Turkish students below 15 years of age underperformed in mathematics, sciences and reading. In contrast, only 10% of students in countries that neared the top of the list underperformed on math, sciences and reading. Between 2012 and 2016, Turkey’s ranking dropped from 43rd in science to 52nd, and from 41st in reading to 50th.

For Erdogan, however, education has hardly anything to do with science. In a 2015 speech, he boasted that since his government came to power in 2002, the number of “imam school” students had risen sharply from a mere 60,000 to 1.2 million.