Faith in government drops, leaders jeered as France mourns Nice victims

Crowds jeered France's leaders at a tribute on Monday to victims of last week's truck attack in Nice and an opinion poll showed a sharp drop in confidence in the ability of President Francois Hollande's government to combat terrorism.

Before and after a minute of silence held to pay respects to the 84 dead, many of the thousands gathered in the south-coast resort city of Nice chanted "resign, resign" at Manuel Valls, the Socialist prime minister. Others yelled "Hollande, resign".

The poll published in Le Figaro newspaper showed 33 percent of respondents were confident in national leaders' ability to fight terrorism, down sharply from confidence levels of at least 50 percent in the wake of two major attacks last year.

"The government promises us things but nothing sticks," Nice city resident Antony Fernandez told Reuters. "What have they done up to now to make us feel safe? And yet what do we expect? Every six months we're going to mourn for more dead?"

Less than a year before a presidential election, political opponents have abandoned the restraint that usually prevails immediately after such national tragedies to sharply criticize Hollande and his government.

Ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is competing in a November primary for the ticket to run as presidential candidate for France's mainstream center-right parties, said overnight that Hollande's government had failed to do all it could.

"I know there's no zero risk, I know perfectly well that we don't pull each other apart before the victims have even been buried," Sarkozy told TF1 TV.

"But I want to say, because it's the truth, that everything that should have been done over the last 18 months ... wasn't done," he said, without proposing what could have been done better.

Prime Minister Manuel Valls dismissed those suggestions.

He told a news conference that plans to extend the state of emergency this week would give police renewed powers to conduct searches without getting judicial warrants and include new measures to exploit information from telephones and computers.

(REUTERS)