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…
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