Paris, Nov 29, IRNA, New outbreak of riots in the Paris suburbs has embarrassed French government.
The spectre of the riots spreading from a suburb (banlieue) to another in a ghastly repeat of November 2005 looms ominously over the country.
Back then, Sarkozy was interior minister and won an unwelcome reputation in the poor high-immigration suburbs for his tough-talking on crime.
Since his election he has fought hard to pose as a unifier – promising to bring jobs and security back to troubled housing estates and appointing several ministers of immigrant background.
But the president knows well how little has really improved in the last two years – and how insignificant could be the spark that plunges France back into another orgy of violence.
It is significant that the riots in Villiers-le-Bel should have broken out just as the country emerged from another, very different, crisis.
For weeks France had been fixated by an old-fashioned capital- versus-labour social dispute over pensions that culminated in a crippling nine-day railway strike.
In the out-of-town high-rise neighborhoods there remains a large population of young men who thanks to unemployment, poor education, destabilized family structures and racial discrimination have very little stake in French society.
Some of these are happy to resort to violence against symbols of the state, and many more lend tacit support.
Police in the latest riots say they were horrified by the degree of hatred directed against them.
One member of the riot squad said that for the first time in his career, he had felt afraid for his life.
With this level of tension, it would take one small over-reaction from a police-officer to leave a rioter dead or injured. And then what?
If – as seems possible – the worst of the rioting is now over, the president will be able to focus attention away from law-and-order and to rehabilitation and social reform.