French Presidential Election
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Overall, the French New Year began pretty much as usual in 2007. Maybe even a bit better.
The usual 400,00 or so Parisians and tourists jammed the Champs Elysées and the base of the Eiffel tower to greet the new year with champagne corks popping all around.
Some 400 or more cars were set aflame in cities around the country as usual on New Year’s eve in France. But this year’s official figures were actually below par for the course.
Nationalists ritually blew up some government property and holiday homes of non-Corsican French mainlanders on the country’s traditionally troubled island department of Corsica, but, as usual, (although one bomb planter exploded himself and hospitalised his partner) no one else was injured.
The usual holiday season strikes by transportation workers hampered some travellers but highway deaths for the holiday period, although saddening as usual, were below norm because of the country’s recently instituted, radar-enforced crackdowns on speeders and drunken or drug-influenced drivers
On a more political note, the annual televised New Year’s greetings by Jacques Chirac, the President of France, contained the usual promises about how his government would be addressing vigorously the most pressing nationwide concerns —the homeless, the jobless and the environment–in its remaining months in office.
What was not usual and an information-age novelty this year was the fact that only moments after the President finished his talk, similar nationwide addresses were beamed out on the personal web sites of the key contenders to take Chirac’s place when his current five-year term ends next Spring.
For all practical purposes it was the time when the shape of the election battle for the French presidency finally became clear.
Across the political spectrum those newly web-oriented politicians, have been giving headline- hunting speeches, making public appearances and according media interviews for many months now.
However, official declarations or party approvals of candidacies for the Presidency started only in late November when the French Socialist party, the current right-of-center government’s main adversary on the left, elected Ségolène Royal, to be its candidate.
It’s the first time in France that a woman, one often dubbed a French Hillary Clinton, has emerged as a solid contender for the Presidency.
Although the valid comparisons between her and Clinton in their political stances pretty much stop after noting that they are both attractive females, she was.
an experienced junior minister in the governments of Chirac’s Socialist predecessor, former President François Mitterrand,
Royal also is the unmarried companion of Socialist party President François Holland by whom she has four children and she is grittily determined to win the presidency.
But against whom will she be competing? It’s technically still an open question but the answer is not much in doubt.
Chirac, in his televised address, carefully avoided saying whether he would or wouldn’t be running for another term. He consistently has maintained that he would make that decision only sometime before the end of March.
He is a President with strong experience and worldwide stature but he is 74 years old and is weighed down by a reputation for sweeping but generally unfulfilled promises during his 12 years in office.
Few political observers, give him any chance of winning or eventually even trying for another mandate. However, in a vigorous effort to show that he is no lame duck and still is in charge, he has been laying out bravado political initiatives almost daily in recent weeks.
Royal’s really serious adversary is France’s hard-charging, straight talking right-of-center Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy who is just as aggressive about seeking the Presidency as is Royal.
While she is clearly a politician of the left, announcing myriad but still often fuzzy policies designed to provide more benefits for workers and their families, Sarkozy is just as clearly a man of the right.
He is generally inclined to seek economic solutions to the nation’s ills first and foremost by loosening the multiple regulations that hamper French industry’s ability to get on with the business of job creation and industrial production.
In many ways, however, he is also just as critical of government policies and actions under Chirac as is Royal, despite the fact that he remains a member of Chirac’s government.
His line is that, even as a government minister, he is obligated to point out that rupture with many old and stodgy ways of dealing with issues of national concern is needed and that he is the man to make that rupture a positive one.
In addition, he is head of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) nominally Chirac’s main supporting political party. Although he was once an acolyte of Chirac’s, the two have had a falling out and retain an icy relationship which certainly would deprive Chirac of UMP support should Chirac decide to run again.
So far, despite his troubles with Chirac and the President’s obvious desire that Sarkozy give up his government post if he wants to officially campaign against its record, he has clung to his Interior Minister’s job.
It y provides him considerable public exposure and extensive travel and expense support as a government minister. He already has been to China, to the United Nations and to Washington to meet with George W. Bush to bolster his international credentials.
And it is not at all sure that he will abandon his minister’s post even after his UMP party’s pro-forma January 14 formal announcement of its support for his presidential candidacy.
That nomination puts him and Royal on equal footing as the chosen candidates of the nation’s main left-of-center and right-of-center political parties.
Of course there are numerous other presidential contenders on the scene, on both sides of the political spectrum but their chances are slim.
That applies even to Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the extreme right-wing National Front party which surprised everyone five years ago by beating out Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the first round of France’s two-tier election system. He lost, however, to Chirac in the run-off between the two top vote-getters a week later.
Le Pen has a strong following and still is regarded warily, but the Socialist party has made it clear to its voters that they need to rally around Royal in the first round so that there’ll be no Le Pen surprise this year.
For the moment, Royal is dominating the headlines in France. Considered a non-starter just a year ago, she has come up with a media-savvy, motherly campaigning style that has rings well with voters and she beat her stunned Socialist competitors hands down in her party’s run-off selections last November.
Pollsters essentially consider a Sarkozy-Royal run-off in May as a given and deem it more or less an even match.
Both have the advantage of representing a new generation and the hope of a new way of governing the nation. Both also have displayed willingness to back positions that go beyond their own parties’ often musty standards.
Sarkozy is conceded a greater experience and mastery of job detail but he has a hard-edge Napoleonic manner that puts off even many voters who agree with his policies.
Royal is credited with more popular appeal on home and family matters including education, cost of living concerns and many essentially women’s issues but behind an almost constantly smiling image; she frequently displays an off-putting hard-edged streak as well.
Cleverly, Royal has been making an all-out effort to shore up her clearly lacking credentials regarding international politics by ostentatious visits to other national leaders particularly when they are women such as Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet.
Although Royal’s handler’s briefly floated the possibility of a trip to the United States and a meeting with Hillary Clinton last December, that talk quickly was dropped, apparently because of a cold response from Clinton.
She has, however now added a much publicized trip to China to her list. Although her inexperienced comments during a recent visit to Lebanon, Israel and Palestine more than offset the points she earned there for having the courage and determination to make the trip, she clearly has been learning as she goes.
Inexperience will not be a problem for Sarkozy even though he well may be more harassed than Royal in the first round. Le Pen and some relatively solid other contenders for his right-of-center following will sap some of his first round support but not enough to keep him out of the run-off.
The real ticking time bomb on his table is the question of whether Jacques Chirac will decide to run again. The odds are against it and the President, in his various new year’s pronouncements, has used hard-line language against American actions in Iraq that no one seriously considering staying in office and having to conduct future negotiations with the American leadership would dream of employing.
But Chirac has successfully bucked predictions and the odds often in his long political career. And the rift with Sarkozy runs deep, too deep to exclude some Chirac move to scuttle Sakozy’s chances in one way or another even if that means opening the presidential palace door for Socialist Royal..
Less than four months remain before the nation goes to the polls for the first election round but now, however, virtually all the important cards (except Chirac’s) are on the table and France is launched at last on a presidential election campaign that is shaping up as something the country won’t forget for a long time.