"Jacques, Dominique and Nicolas: In case you didn't hear it the first time, we'll say it again: Down with the CPE!"

With this pithy appeal directed at French President Jacques Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, millions of opponents of the "Contrat première embauche" took to the streets across France on Tuesday for the fifth day of mass protests and strikes against the French government's controversial "first-time employment contract."

Students and trade unionists set the tone in Marseilles on Tuesday, where protestors numbered between 10,000 and 30,000. According to organizers, protests in France's major cities drew crowds similar in scale to last week's "national day of action," which attracted a record number of about 2.8 million people.

As happened last week, post offices and banks remained shuttered on Tuesday, and trains, buses and subways operated on pared-down schedules. Some newspapers didn't go to press and radio stations broadcast only limited versions of their regular programming. The walkout was observed in many schools and universities, where quarrels erupted between protesters and students who preferred to attend classes.

Despite the differences, the protests remained largely peaceful.

With 195 demonstrations staged nationwide, opponents of the CPE sought to increase pressure on the administration to repeal recently approved legislation that would enable companies to fire employees up to the age of 26 within the first two years of their employment -- without justification or notification. Currently, it is extremely difficult to terminate employees after they have worked for a company for longer than six months. In a deliberate play on words, the Paris-based newspaper Libération dubbed Tuesday's mass demonstrations "CPE -- Cortèges Pour un Enterrement" (Funeral Procession for a Burial).

"The CPE is dead"

On Monday, former French Prime Minister Eduard Balladur pronounced the official obituary to the CPE when he said: "CPE is gone, dead, and everyone knows it."

But the true responsibility for the death of the CPE lies with the French president. At first, and apparently in response to pressure from Prime Minister Villepin, who had threatened to resign, Jacques Chirac spent ten weeks "in full solidarity," defending a law that had been essentially forced through the parliament. It was not until last Friday that, in light of the growing protest movement, Chirac finally yielded to public pressure.

Despite the fact that France's Constitutional Council -- responding to demands by the Socialist opposition -- reviewed the amendment's legality and declared it to be legal in all respects, Chirac publicly distanced himself from the law. Wearing thick glasses and a mournful expression on his face, the president told his fellow Frenchmen in a televised address that, although he would sign and give his blessing to the law, he also planned to suspend it until the parliamentary leaders of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) had made the necessary changes. The UMP's leader, Interior Minister Sarkozy, is Villepin's political archrival.

From sleight of hand to disaster

Since then, the president's sleight of hand has increasingly turned into a political disaster. Instead of defusing the country's ongoing social crisis, Chirac's intervention merely amplified the chaos. With his contradictory public statements -- approving the law in one breath and putting in on ice in another -- he has confused his own camp, raised the hackles of the proponents of constitutional law, angered trade unions and the opposition and, last but not least, compromised Prime Minister Villepin.

Villepin's loss of authority as a result of Chirac's betrayal means that the prime minister's hated rival within his own party, Sarkozy, whose position as interior minister officially makes him the No. 2 man within the government hierarchy, is now running the administration's business -- thus relegating the prime minister to the diminished role of frustrated spectator.

Sarkozy, who has made no secret of his plans to run for French president in next spring's elections, is taking full advantage of his current role as crisis manager. In a clear dig against the constipated Villepin, Sarkozy called for "taking up the strings of dialogue" and, assuming a statesman-like pose, saying that "France must once again learn to hold a conversation."

The "real premier," as head of the opposition Socialists Francois Hollande has dubbed UMP leader Sarkozy, promptly invited union bosses and the representatives of student organizations within the UMP parliamentary group to a summit meeting of all social partners, promising a discussion that would be "impartial and without any taboos."

Ultimately, Sarkozy's rhetoric is nothing more a first-class state funeral for the "first-time employment law." Despite the interior minister's avowed solidarity with the administration ("We want the unity of the governing majority"), current tensions can only be eased if the law is relieved of all its controversial elements when it comes up for debate again in parliament -- ultimately rendering it superfluous.

Despite the fact that the legislation was only recently enacted, it is already essentially out of force. In a memo to some 220 professional associations and employer alliances, Employment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo recommends that, in the interest of "legal certainty," no further CPE contracts should be signed throughout France until the government can enact new legislation.