France following the bait and switch path of the Bush monkeys

Sarkozy and the "Decline" of France

The Great Illusion

By JEAN BRICMONT

Two thirds of French people think their country is in decline. That is without doubt the principal reason why Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President of the Republic. Moreover, the main way the media contributed to his triumph was by years of constant propaganda on the theme of "the decline of France", along with the related theme of "security".

There are various ways to counter that notion. One is to show that the selection and interpretation of the statistics used to "prove" France's decline are extremely biased. (For example, on the subject of youth unemployment, see Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C., "An Economist View of the French Election".)

Another approach is to ask what solutions are proposed by the heralds of "decline".

The declinists cleverly mix up two problems. One is the decline of France in relation to the emerging countries, especially in Asia. The other is the supposed decline of France in relation to other industrialized countries, especially the United States and Britain. The first form of "decline" is merely the reflection of a very positive development: the fact that large parts of the Third World are catching up with the industrialized West. But, since it would make no sense to propose imitating China and India, the declinists propose imitating the Anglo-American model, which is supposed to avoid decline by a series of measures: flexible work conditions, destruction of hard-won social protections and public services, tough security enforcement and moral rearmament.

But let's take a closer look at their favorite model, the United States. The Americans have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to invade Iraq. Thousands of their soldiers have been killed, tens of thousands wounded, and they are completely stuck. They can't win, because they have succeeded in turning the immense majority of Iraqis against them, and they can't leave, because it would mean the end of their empire. And so they are going to be bogged down in Iraq for many years, losing still more men, money and prestige, while causing unspeakable and useless suffering to the Iraqi people. And why are they in Iraq? Among other things, thanks to manipulation of public opinion concerning weapons of mass destruction. The Americans have intelligence services that spy on the whole world, a free press with immense resources, universities packed with specialists on every conflict and problem on earth. And yet, they have not been able to understand the most elementary realities, that even a child traveling to the Middle East could understand, that is, that they are hated primarily because of their support to Israel, and that their intervention in the region is bound to provoke massive rejection.

If that blend of incapacity, ignorance and arrogance is not symptomatic of a society in decline, then it's hard to imagine what "decline" is all about. Slight gaps in GNP and unemployment rates are minor technicalities in comparison. France, in contrast, which in 2003 still had an elite described as "aging, outdated, behind the times"--but still able to think--did not go along with that madness.

But that's not all. The rest of the world, and especially France, is constantly called upon to do as the United States does. Now, let us imagine that by the wave of a magic wand, the rest of the world really starts to imitate the United States. Where will they get all the petroleum and other raw materials that the United States imports in vast quantities, on which its society is totally dependent to preserve its way of life? Where will they get the immigrant workers, often undocumented, that is, without rights, or the floods of cheap imported goods which are not even really paid for, since they are financed by ever-expanding trade deficits, but which enable workers who have lost their industrial jobs to continue to consume the things they need? And finally, where will they get the brains that the United States drains from the rest of the world; because it is cheaper to offer high salaries to lure people who are already well educated than to finance a genuine system of mass education?

The fact is that the American model is impossible to imitate, because its very survival depends on the existence of a world outside the United States which is quite different. It is true that the situation of Europe is fairly similar, but it is precisely our degree of proximity to the "American model" that is the proper gauge of our decline. Moreover, without the military power of the United States, neither France nor Europe can even try to prolong a situation that is untenable in the long term.

It is rather amusing to see Sarkozy, who is supposed to embody "the France that works hard and wins", score his greatest electoral hit among retired voters. His program, like that of George W. Bush, is not turned toward the future in a realistic way, but on the contrary attracts people who long for the good old days when Europe and the United States were far more powerful than they are today. The fantasy of power is another sign of decadence.

Sarkozy's election is an undeniable victory for the United States and for Israel. But it runs the very real risk of being a pyrrhic victory, because the decisive battles of our times are taking place outside of Europe: in Asia, in Latin America and in the Middle East. And there, the United States is losing on all fronts. We are living in a world that we no longer dominate and to which we shall have to adapt, and not by nostalgia for the past.

Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, will be published by Monthly Review Press. He can be reached at bricmont@fyma.ucl.ac.be.

Original article posted here

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Perfect example of the pettiness and stupidity of the Left: Socialist paper attacks Royal for not being Left enough, against neo-con Warmonger

Weazl officially says this article contains many stupid points of view

Sarkozy’s electoral victory and the bankruptcy of the French “left”

By Peter Schwarz

The election of right-wing Gaullist politician Nicolas Sarkozy as French president has shocked many people in France and Europe.

One recalls the mood of euphoria two years ago when French voters rejected the European constitution. The same population forced the withdrawal of the unpopular “First Job Contract” (CPE) through a series of protests and demonstrations just one year ago.

At the time various petty bourgeois “left” organisations declared that these movements had rendered the policies of the Chirac government “illegitimate and disavowed.” Now was the time to develop “a common movement which is able to take on the employers directly and question the entire neo-liberal policy” (Statement by the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire [LCR—Revolutionary Communist League])

Now, less than a year later, a man is taking over as president whose right-wing convictions are beyond dispute—he is an ideological ally of US president George W. Bush and the former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar. Sarkozy wants to revive the values of order, performance and reward, and regards himself as the man to deal once and for all with the heritage of the 1968 protest generation. The international business press has enthusiastically welcomed his election. They expect him to finally dismantle the French welfare state, slash the jobs of many of the country’s five million civil servants, cut pensions, make the labor market more ‘flexible’—and contrary to his predecessors—not give way to pressure from the streets.

How was it possible for this noxious politician to collect 19 million votes and emerge as the victor in an election characterized by an extraordinarily high voter turnout?

For the Socialist Party (PS) and media the answer is clear: French voters are to blame. The latter, so goes the argument, have moved to the right and Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal did not follow them fast and far enough. As former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn put it on the evening of the election, the Socialist Party had so far missed its chance to carry out a “social-democratic renewal” along the lines of the German Social Democratic Party at its notorious Bad Godesberg conference. In particular, the PS had neglected voters from the “centre”

This explanation ignores social reality and fails to identify the profound social contradictions behind the election result. The “voters of the centre” are an abstraction. The middle classes in France, as elsewhere, are enormously polarized. For a long time they constituted the social glue which bound together social extremes. However, under the effects of the globalization a majority has descended into the proletariat, while a small minority has been able to climb its way upward.

The classic member of the middle class—the craftsmen, farmer, landlord and little businessmen—confronts many of the same problems today as the average worker. The same applies to the urban middle class. The days when a university degree guaranteed a career and a regular income are long gone. Now it is common in France to encounter the temporary worker with a university degree, or the academic who moves from a work placement center to a part-time job and then a short-term contract.

There is no reflection of this social polarization in official politics. While broad sections of workers and young people have been radicalized and have protested time and time against social ills, the Socialist Party and its allies have intervened to sabotage their struggles, spread disappointment and demoralization and thereby paved the way for Sarkozy. His success has far less to do with his own strengths than it does with the bankruptcy of the “left,” its abject inability to present a progressive social alternative.

Strauss-Kahn notwithstanding, the French Socialist Party has long since put its ‘Bad Godesberg conversion’ behind it. It is a bourgeois party, which defends the capitalist order. Into the 1970s, it did this through the means of social compromise, or rather, the promise of social compromise.

Since then, however, pressure from international financial markets and the effects of globalization have wiped out the basis for any policy based on social compromise. Under the presidency of François Mitterrand and the government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin one promise after another was broken Social gains were slashed, unemployment stagnated at around ten percent, incomes sank and living conditions in the suburbs became increasingly intolerable.

The first to profit was the extreme right National Front led by Jean-Marie Le Pen. With the help of an electoral reform introduced by Mitterrand, his party was regularly able to notch up two-digit election results.

The recent election campaign of Ségolène Royals represented a new low-point for the Socialist Party. Groomed by her public relations advisors, the PS candidate posed as a mixture of a female version of Sarkozy and Alice in Wonderland. She competed with Sarkozy when it came to professions of loyalty to national identity and tough action against juvenile offenders, while at the same time making all sorts of windy promises. She began every second sentence of her speeches with the words “I want”: “I want France tomorrow to be calm country, which believes in itself, where all Frenchmen have a place, and love it,” “I want to take the best from each epoch, to reinvent the France of tomorrow,” and so on.

Royal did not care to explain how her wishes were to be fulfilled. Why should anyone have believed her? 1.6 million unfilled voting cards from a total of 36 million voters indicates that many took part in the election, though they doubtless found it hard to decide between the candidates Some chose to elect Sarkozy, whose program was not attractive, but at least promised change.

According to election analyses Sarkozy received the same number of votes from workers as Royal, with 53 percent of workers in the private sector voting for the Gaullist candidate. He also won 57 percent of those between 25 to 34 years. He had the support of 77 percent of all self-employed, as well as 68 percent of pensioners over the age of 70.

Royal, on the other hand, was only able to win a majority amongst young voters under 24 (60 percent) and those voters who will be directly affected by Sarkozy’s election. In the public sector, where Sarkozy has announced plans for substantial job cuts, 57 percent voted for Royal, who also had the support of 75 percent of unemployed persons. Some 58 percent of students also voted for the SP candidate.

Do the millions of votes from workers and young voters for Sarkozy mean agreement with his program? It would be absurd to draw this conclusion. The election was characterized by a fundamental contradiction. On the hand, there is a broad interest and urge to participate in political life—expressed in the well-attended election meetings and the high voter turnout. On the other hand, the electorate was confronted with two candidates with right-wing bourgeois programs, who differed from one another much more in style than in substance.

The bankruptcy of the official “left” has created a dangerous situation. Sarkozy is the most reactionary politician to assume the post of French president since the end of the Vichy regime in World War II. There can be no doubt that he takes the threats he has made seriously. This is not just bound up with his notorious fiery temperament, but also the enormous pressure being exerted by the employer’s federations and financial circles.

Sarkozy has already announced that he intends to reintroduce the rejected European constitution in a slightly modified form and without a new referendum. On May 17 he is expected to name the former labor minister François Fillon as his prime minister. Fillon’s attempts to ‘reform’ the French pension system four years ago brought millions of public and private sector workers into the streets in protest. Two years later, in his role as education minister, Fillon provoked renewed protests from students.

According to the head of his election campaign team, Claude Guéant, Sarkozy is also contemplating bringing “left” ministers into his cabinet to draw the Socialist Party into his attacks on the working class.

For its part, the working class must prepare for inevitable clashes with Sarkozy and his government by drawing the lessons from the bankruptcy of the Socialist Party and its allies. It must take up the struggle against Sarkosy on the basis of an international socialist program, which proceeds from the incompatibility of the existing forms of capitalist relations with the basic needs and requirements of working people. To this end workers require a new independent socialist party.

The French left radical parties—the LCR and Lutte Ouvrière—systematically seek to prevent such a development. Both organizations called for a vote for Royal in the second round and have now reacted to her defeat in the manner of shocked opportunists. Both act as if nothing significant has happened, refuse to make a political balance sheet of the elections and return to business as usual.

In her statement on the election result, Arlette Laguiller of Lutte Ouvrière blithely declares, “For the next five years the broad masses will have to put up with the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy and one or more governments, which carry out social policies in line with those of the government of the last five years.” She does not dream of questioning the legitimacy of a presidency who owes his post entirely too the bankruptcy of the official left.

She calls upon her supporters to “Keep their heads up,” and comforts them with the thought that “we would have had to fight if Ségolène Royal had been elected, to ensure that things perhaps changed even a little in our favor. It will be the same with Nicolas Sarkozy and the struggle will be the same.”

On election night Olivier Besancenot (LCR) made the call for a “united front of all social and democratic forces” In the name of unity such an alliance—in reality, the LCR in a pact with the Communist Party, the trade unions and other reliable props of the bourgeois order—would sabotage any struggle against Sarkozy and his government. Any serious confrontation would inevitably develop into a struggle for power and such a struggle is firmly rejected by both LO, LCR and the trade union bureaucracies they support.

Original article posted here.

Warm welcome to French Neo Con

France sees second night of unrest after Sarkozy's election

Paris - France saw violent clashes for the second night in a row amid demonstrations against conservative Nicolas Sarkozy's win in Sunday's presidential election.

Cars and trash containers were set on fire in a number of cities overnight and primarily young protesters threw rocks and bottles at police, police said early Tuesday.

More than 100 demonstrators were arrested in Paris alone. Unrest was also reported in Lyon, Lille, Toulouse, Nantes and Rennes.

About 500 leftist opponents of Sarkozy assembled on Paris' Bastille Square late Monday. Police moved in when shop windows began to be smashed and telephone booths demolished.

Police said they engaged with small groups of protestors around the square until well past midnight. Police said the demonstrators had attacked them with projectiles but no officers were hurt.

Clashes were also reported in the western cities of Nantes and Rennes at the end of anti-Sarkozy protests.

About 400 protested against the future president in Nantes and 10 were arrested, police said.

Arrests were also reported in the northern city of Lille and in Toulouse in southern France.

Sarkozy won Sunday's election against Socialist Segolene Royal with 53.06 per cent of the vote.

In the violence during the night immediately after the voting, police said they arrested 592 arsonists and rioters around the country, 730 cars were set on fire and 78 police hurt in clashes with leftist protesters.

Sarkozy did not comment on the demonstrations and clashes. On Monday, he flew to Malta to rest away from the media and to reflect on the formation of his government, aides said.

Original article posted here.

The New French Man of the People

Violent Protests Greet Sarkozy’s Election in France

By CRAIG S. SMITH

PARIS, May 7 — Violent protests against the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France ended early today with hundreds of people arrested, hundreds of cars gutted and hundreds of windows smashed in several cities across in France.

Some people fear the reaction is just a taste of what is likely to come if Mr. Sarkozy makes good on his campaign promises to push through controversial economic legislation during his first 100 days in office.

Agence France-Presse, citing national police headquarters, reported that 730 cars had been set afire overnight, 35 in Paris, and that 592 people had been arrested, 79 in the capital. It said 78 police officers had been injured.

Some of the most concentrated violence took place at Place de la Bastille in Paris where the police fired volley after volley of teargas cluster grenades that looked like fireworks before descending on the crowd of young protesters. At one point, the square — the site of the July 14, 1789, uprising that is celebrated annually — was thick with white teargas reflecting the orange glow of a car fire while silhouetted youths heaved paving stones at tight formations of armored riot police officers.

But the violence also struck elsewhere in the French capital, leaving bus stop shelters shattered and slogans like “Sarkozy Fascist” scrawled on walls around Paris.

While Mr. Sarkozy is most despised by minority youths in the country’s poor housing projects on the outskirts of major French cities, most of the violence took place in city centers. Reuters quoted an internal police memo that said there had not been “any large demonstrations of urban violence in sensitive neighborhoods.”

In Paris, at least, the protesters were mostly white and below the age of 30, similar to the crowds who took to the streets last year to protest a new labor law that would have made it easier for companies to fire young workers.

Those protests eventually led to the repeal of the law and killed Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s chance of running for president.

Mr. Sarkozy risks facing even greater unrest with his proposed legislation, which includes a law that would require unions to guarantee a minimum of public services — transportation, in particular — during strikes.

That provision would take the sharpest teeth out of France’s unions, which rely on their ability to block transport in order to pressure the government. Although less than 10 percent of the French work force is unionized, the unions’ call to action is often met with support from groups in many sectors of society — including youths.

Already, France’s largest and most critical unions — the CGT and the CFDT, which are heavily involved in public transportation and utilities — are warning Mr. Sarkozy to expect protesters in the streets if he tries push through changes in pension plans or moves to limit the unions’ ability to strike, as he has vowed to do in his first 100 days.

“If the government wants to pass reforms by force during the summer, it risks a big reaction by workers,” said Michel Grignard, national secretary of the CFDT, in an interview before Sunday’s vote.

Given Mr. Sarkozy’s lack of popularity among many of the country’s youth, any mass demonstration against his policies would likely draw young people into the streets creating the conditions for even more violent clashes.

Violence was reported in the southeastern city of Lyon and the southern city of Toulouse. Bus shelters were smashed in the northern city of Lille and a school was set on fire in the Paris suburb of Evry, Reuters reported. In the northern area around Lille, about 100 cars were reportedly set on fire.

Reuters also quoted the head of public security for the Loire-Atlantique as saying that 26 people were being held for questioning and six police officers were slightly injured during an anti-Sarkozy rally in Nantes. In the northern city of Caen, four police officers were hurt and some protesters tried to set a local Sarkozy campaign office on fire.

Original article posted here.

Well, we kinda told you so . . .

Paris riots after election results

CLASHES between police and protestors have been reported in central Paris and the southeastern city of Lyon after conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy was elected French President overnight.

In the Place de la Bastille in Paris riot police fired tear gas and at least one burst of water cannon after hundreds of rioters – some wearing masks – began throwing bottles, stones and other missiles.

Earlier, a small crowd brandishing black and red anarchist flags set fire to an effigy of Mr Sarkozy before tearing it limb from limb and then stamping on it. Demonstrators changed "police everywhere, justice nowhere".

Gallery: Protestors' fury over the election result today
Video: Mixed reactions to Nicolas Sarkozy's win

About 5000 supporters of defeated Socialist party candidate Segolene Royal had gathered in the square to await the election results. Mr Sarkozy beat Ms Royal by 53 per cent of the vote to 47 per cent, according to projections.

The defeated Socialists had portrayed Mr Sarkozy as a danger for France during the election campaign and said he was authoritarian who was likely to exacerbate tensions in the poor, multi-racial suburbs that ring many cities.

Thousands of extra police have been drafted in to patrol sensitive areas following the election result.

Victory celebrations

In another part of central Paris, Mr Sarkozy appeared before cheering crowds in and promised to be "president for all the French without exception".

"This evening is a victory for France," he said to a crowd of 10,000 in the Place de la Concorde.

"I ask you to be generous, to be tolerant, to be fraternal. I ask you to hold out your hand. I ask you to give the image of a France that is united, together, which leaves no-one at the side of the road.

"My dear friends, I have seen victories before in my career. But victory is only beautiful if it is generous. Victory is not vengeance – it is being open in spirit. Victory only has meaning if it is victory for the country in its entirety.

"Millions of French are watching us. Millions of French have placed their trust in us. You must understand that the first people I wish to address are those who did not place their trust in us.

"I want them to understand that I will be a president of the republic for all the French without exception."

Global response

European leaders congratulated Mr Sarkozy on his victory today and hoped his triumph would help unblock reforms stalled by the rejection of the EU constitution in 2005.

US President George W. Bush also telephoned to offer his congratulations and said he expected good relations with the new leader, who has made a priority of repairing the damage to French-US relations caused by tension over the Iraq war.

Mr Sarkozy's election could help re-start the process of finding a way forward on reviving the European Union constitution, which has been held up as Europe awaited the results of the French election.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he was confident Mr Sarkozy would help find a way out of the impasse that has gripped Europe since French and Dutch voters threw out the constitution in referenda two years ago.

"France is back in Europe," Mr Sarkozy said just after his election win.

Mr Sarkozy has proposed a slimmed-down "mini treaty" containing basic institutional reforms that would allow the EU to function properly after its expansion to 27 members. To avoid the need for a second referendum in France, he wants to pass the mini treaty through parliament.

Original article posted here.

Was there election fraud in France? Weazl isn't sure but Wayne Madsen thinks so

Nicolas Sarkozy (whom are French intelligence sources have referred to a the "little French Hitler") will govern France with the help of two Silvio Berlusconi- and Rupert Murdoch-like billionaire neo-con French media moguls, Martin Bouygues and Arnaud Lagardere. Bouygues owns the TF1 television channel, which can be expected to act as Sarkozy's own version of the U.S. Republican Party's Fox News Channel. Lagardere's media group owns the Europe 1 radio network, Paris Match, several French regional newspapers, and is a major stakeholder in the French television network Canal+. Sarkozy is known to censor any news reports that are unfavorable to him and pressure publishers and editors to fire wayward journalists. With much of the French media in his pocket, expect the Franco-Hungarian Sarkozy to institute a new era of Janos Kadarist-style censorship in his nation.

The French election, from the start, has been plagued by election fraud -- bogus polling data, false exit polls, and electronic voting machine and machine counting irregularities were hallmarks of the first presidential election round. ES&S's I-Votronic machines were used in both elections across France. Only Sarkozy's party was supportive of the machines, with all the other political parties calling for a moratorium on their use. Turnout in the French election was over 75 percent. With large turnouts historically favoring the left in France, the exit polling and actual polling were at odds with the turnout -- an indication of massive election fraud.

Similar polling irregularities were experienced in recent elections in Scotland, Wales, and England. In Scotland, 100,000 ballots, thought to mostly be cast for the pro-independence Scottish National Party, were declared "spoiled" in Scotland's election. That "glitch" cost the Scottish Nationalists a larger majority in the Scottish Parliament. Irregularities in Wales and England similarly affected larger margins for Welsh and Cornish nationalists. As the Bretons and Corsicans will soon discover with Sarkozy, regional nationalism is anathema to the globalist neo-con agenda, particularly the international bankers who want strong centralized control and minimal devolution of power to local and regional governments.

The electoral malfeasance of neo-cons in manipulating elections in France, Britain, Canada, the United States, Italy, Australia, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, and other countries will remain a problem until the people, acting through the power of progressive, anti-globalist, and anti-capitalist governments, seize control, via whatever means necessary, of the media, the voting and vote counting process, and the opinion polling mechanisms.

Original article posted here.

What will France now become?

French suburbs threaten riotous dawn for the reign of Sarkozy

Grievances of left simmer as reform looms

Matthew Campbell, Paris

THE victims of Soviet communism would find it hard to understand, but a giant yellow banner was unfurled in the centre of Paris last week, bearing portraits of Lenin and Stalin. “Only socialism can save the world” it proclaimed in black ink.

Welcome to the annual May Day rally in Paris, always a festive affair. Salsa music blared from the back of a lorry and an aroma of barbecued Merguez sausages filled the air. Trotskyite militants handed out leaflets denouncing the capitalist system.

The march, which attracted 60,000 people under flags emblazoned with the hammer and sickle, was a reminder of how different France is to other European countries with its lingering affection for ideas jettisoned long ago elsewhere in the world.

It was also a warning to Nicolas Sarkozy, the reform-minded conservative candidate for the presidency, of the trouble that may lie in wait for him if he wins the presidential election today and embarks on ambitious plans for modernising a country badly in need of renewal and disillusioned with its ruling elite.

President Charles de Gaulle once famously remarked that it was impossible to govern a country with so many different cheeses. Over the past few years the truth of that tenet has been confirmed as the government of outgoing President Jacques Chirac has limped impotently from one crisis to another.

Is Sarkozy any more likely to succeed than his discredited predecessors?

He would like to make the notoriously grumpy French feel better about themselves in the epoch of globalisation, raising wages and productivity, reducing unemployment and restoring a sense of pride in la belle France and her history.

Seldom has an election generated so much excitement or expectation of change: turnout in the first round of voting on April 22 was at its highest since 1974 and Sarkozy’s clash with Ségolène Royal, his Socialist rival, last Wednesday night was watched by more than 20m people, almost as many as followed the country’s fortunes against Germany in the World Cup final of 2006.

Sarkozy, 52, and Royal, 53, are much younger than previous incumbents. Royal is the first woman to have come this close to the presidency and Sarkozy the first presidential finalist whose father was not French – he fled communist Hungary for Paris after the second world war.

Sarkozy, ahead in all 27 polls taken since he won the first round, knows how heavy a burden rests on his shoulders. He has announced that if he wins, he will go on a retreat for a few days to prepare himself, like a boxer ahead of the big fight, for the challenge of running the world’s fifth largest economy.

“I will need to be alone with myself,” he said.

Royal, a charismatic mother of four, fought tooth and nail to convince her countrymen not to back “Sarko”, as they referred to the combative former interior minister. Her last-minute appeals to voters, however, took on an almost desperate air as she sensed the electoral arithmetic turning against her.

On Friday morning she warned that France could slide into violence if Sarkozy, a famously divisive figure, won the election. She said she was “issuing an alert” that his victory could “trigger violence and brutality across the country. His candidacy is dangerous. That is why I am asking voters to think twice”.

Sarkozy’s increasingly confident team called such attacks “outrageous” but nobody disputed the possibility of a toxic brew of antiSarkozy grievances erupting in violence, particularly in the immigrant suburbs, if his victory is announced tonight.

Arab and African residents of the banlieues, as the suburbs are known, have been in an angry, vengeful mood since Sarkozy described young delinquents as “scum” and “thugs” in 2005.

His comments were widely believed to have contributed to the most severe violence in France in four decades, when 10,000 cars were burnt in a rampage of rioting.

The grim housing estates ringing most big French cities were buzzing last week with rumours of another “explosion” of anger if Sarkozy wins.

The banlieues were not the only potential flashpoint, however. A different group of “thugs” could prove to be just as troublesome for a Sarkozy presidency.

One of Sarkozy’s first priorities was to introduce a law by July to curb the power of organised labour. The unions responded by turning their May Day parade last week into a giant protest against “Sarko”.

Militants handed out “stop Sarko” badges and stickers. Some of the leaflets on offer depicted him as a vampire.

The “TSS”, or “tout sauf Sarkozy” – “anyone but Sarkozy”, campaign has featured video clips attempting to link him with everything from racism to the Church of Scientology. One of them featured Sarkozy’s mother describing the “privileged” background he came from in the affluent suburb of Neuilly. It seemed to undermine his claims that he had been forced to work as an ice-cream seller to help to finance his studies.

One of the protesters hoisted aloft a placard that said “Sarkozy = Napoleon”. Another marcher shouted into a loud-speaker, “Arrest Sarkozy, free the sans papiers” – a reference to those without documents who face expulsion following Sarkozy’s crackdown on illegal immigrants when he was interior minister.

Another performer in this antiSarkozy circus was a man on a lorry dressed in a black cape and helmet who was trying to depict Sarkozy as Darth Vader, the “dark force” of the Star Wars films.

At the front of the parade was Bernard Thibault, leader of the CGT, France’s most powerful union. “He should think twice about doing anything without negotiating with us,” he said. “If not, there will be reactions. Strong reactions.”

In a cream linen jacket, the chain-smoking Thibault was flanked by muscle-bound heavies clutching their CGT banner. One said the march was “a show of strength to remind Sarko to get ready for the third round of the election that will be fought on the street”.

Various governments have tried over the past 12 years to implement laws to free a stagnating economy, each time backing down after noisy street protests, some of them led by Thibault and his followers from the placard-wielding far left.

That is what happened in 1997, forcing a timid Chirac to give in, and again last year, when the government proposed a law that would have made it easier for employers to sack workers. The idea was to encourage hiring but it provoked a wave of protests that forced the government to retreat.

Only about 8% of French workers belong to trade unions but they have a powerful grip on public services and some important companies, making it easy for them to paralyse the country by blocking transport systems.

By passing a law to ensure minimum public services during a strike, as well as secret ballots for union members, Sarkozy hoped to draw the teeth from the unrest that he knows will follow what, by French standards, is his extremely ambitious package of reform. It would in effect end the 35-hour week and other “social perks” that union militants consider to be sacrosanct. Railway workers, for example, can retire at 55, the shortfall in their pension contributions being made up by taxpayers.

Not only does Sarkozy want to change that. His call last week to “liquidate” the May ’68 culture of protest – the very culture that allows Thibault and friends to settle political differences on the street – was another example of what union bosses called a “Thatcher-style” effort to castrate them and sell their country into free-market slavery.

“Everybody must know,” said Bruno Juilliard, head of the UNEF student union, “that the unions will mobilise to defend their rights if they are under threat.”

Sarkozy, however, seemed to be spoiling for a fight. “I’m sorry if M Thibault does not like it, but it’s the French who choose,” he said.

To his fans it makes him a hero: only this pugnacious, stubborn and hyperactive personality with a determination to succeed is capable, they say, of dragging France out of its malaise and reconciling it with the free market.

His enemies, however, echo Royal’s view of him as a dictator figure whose abrasive style would deepen the French fracture. Perhaps the most serious insult that she has hurled at him in this antiAmerican country is the charge that he “imitates” President George W Bush. “He has the same neoconservative ideology,” she said on Friday.

Sarkozy has tried to tone down his aggressive image. In his final campaign rally in Montpellier on Thursday night, he struck a more compassionate tone to challenge what had been Royal’s monopoly of the heart.

He invited voters to join a “fraternal” republic in which there was a place for “even the most humble, the most fragile, the most wounded by life, the most dependent”.

He spoke of the tragedies of Alzheimer’s disease and depression, the plight of single women bringing up children, the difficulties of being, like him, an immigrant’s son or of living in a neglected suburb. He spoke of the need for “fraternity and respect” and said that he wanted to defend his convictions “without hatred, scorn, arrogance or violence”.

At the same time he emphasised that he had meant what he said about troublemakers in the suburbs. “I used the word scum,” he said, adding: “People have reproached me for it, but I regret nothing.” The crowd erupted in applause. “What sort of educators would we be if thugs cannot even be called thugs?”

He continued: “They tell me that I should not create tension, that I should not give a pretext to the wreckers, that I must at all cost avoid creating conditions for confrontation. Does that mean that the police must hide? Shut their eyes? Leave the thugs free to act?”

There were chants of “no” from the crowd. He went on: “People accuse me of encouraging public anger. But who’s angry – the yobs? The drug traffickers? I can assure you: I do not seek to be the friend of yobs. My aim is not to make myself popular among the traffickers and the fraudsters.”

In his presidential campaign Sarkozy was sensible, perhaps, not to set foot in the suburbs.

“People despise him so much that one of these days I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tried to whack him,” said Abdel Benarbia, a 15-year-old schoolboy sunning himself on a patch of grass in the shadow of his tower block in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb 10 miles from the centre of Paris where the 2005 riots began.

Kader, his elder brother, agreed and repeated what sounded more like a promise than a prediction: “If Sarko gets in, it’s going to explode.” Not that they wanted to play any role in the violence.

Far from it. They were afraid of what might follow. Already routine police checks are a constant anxiety for the Algerian-born Kader, who has a job loading meals at Charles de Gaulle airport and wants to keep it. He was worried that “oppression and racism” would only get worse under Sarkozy.

“If they accuse you of something round here, it’s their word against yours,” he explained. “It’s easy for the innocent to get caught up in trouble.”

There may be hope for the banlieues, however. In these urban badlands of high unemployment, crime and hopelessness, the television satellite dishes may be tuned to Morocco but participation in French political life is increasing.

“We’ve been telling people that unless they register to vote no politician will ever give a damn about them,” said Samir Mihi, a personal fitness trainer who is running a voter registration campaign in Clichy-sous-Bois. “We want people to use the ballot box, not boxes of Molotov cocktails.”

Sarkozy can feel happy about that. Yet it will be some time before the “fraternal republic” exists anywhere other than in his imagination.

Original article posted here.

weazl's lady resorting to fearmongering. A sign of desperation, not a way to win voters (in this case) and not the moral highground

France's Royal warns of violence if Sarkozy wins

By Anna Willard and Kerstin Gehmlich

PARIS (Reuters) - Socialist candidate Segolene Royal said on Friday France risked plunging into brutality and violence if right-wing frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy wins Sunday's presidential election.

With opinion polls showing Sarkozy increasing his lead ahead of the second round run-off, Royal sought to raise the stakes on the last day of official campaigning, accusing her opponent of lying and manipulating the media.

"I think that choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice. I do not want France to shift towards a system of brutality," Royal told RTL radio.

Opinion polls have shown Sarkozy building a commanding lead against Royal following a fiery television debate between the two on Wednesday night, when he questioned whether she had the right temperament to become president.

A TNS Sofres poll published on Friday showed him at 54.5 percent, compared to 45.5 percent for the Socialist, while an IPSOS poll put him on 54 percent against 46 percent for Royal.

Refusing to concede defeat, Royal warned of potential violence in the suburbs if her rival won, accusing him of polarizing France during his time as interior minister in the outgoing conservative government.

Sarkozy has presented himself as a tough crime-buster, but she said street violence had risen in recent years, adding her opponent could no longer set foot in some high-rise suburbs for fear of provoking a riot.

"When a candidate has so much nerve to tell lies and counter-truths and cannot even go everywhere in the country, then yes, I think this candidature is a risk."

Sarkozy laughed off her comments.

"She's not in a good mood this morning. It must be the opinion polls," he told Europe 1 radio, sounding relaxed but refusing to cry victory ahead of Sunday evening when voting stations close.

Campaigning must end at midnight on Friday ahead of voting in some of France's overseas territories on Saturday. The rest of the nation will vote on Sunday.

Both candidates have tried to appeal to voters of other parties to boost their scores ahead of the ballot.

Royal is to spend Friday in Brittany, in western France, where she will be hoping to win over any undecided voters who could help her close the gap with her rival and make her France's first woman president.

Sarkozy, who has topped every opinion poll since leading in the first round vote on April 22, will visit the Alps.

Original article posted here.

weazl's suspicions confirmed: Debate did not help Sego, but Sarko

Sarkozy stays ahead after TV presidential debate

By James Mackenzie

PARIS (Reuters) - French conservative Nicolas Sarkozy outshone his Socialist rival Segolene Royal in a televised debate, boosting his position as clear favorite to win Sunday's presidential election, an opinion poll showed on Thursday.

Socialists attacked the Opinionway poll for the conservative daily Le Figaro and most media judged Wednesday's debate a draw.

The poll showed 53 percent of viewers found Sarkozy more convincing in the debate against 31 percent for Royal.

In a sometimes fiery exchange, Royal was surprisingly pugnacious in taking on a generally restrained Sarkozy but neither candidate delivered any of the kind of lethal oneliners or gaffes likely to sway voters decisively.

"Each camp will celebrate its champion and deride the adversary," said the daily Le Parisien.

The influential daily Le Monde said the debate was unlikely to turn the campaign round and said the "disappointing" exchange gave little sense of the way forward for France.

But it gave a cautious endorsement of Royal, saying victory would give her the authority to renew the left in France. "It's a gamble. For the country, it's worth trying," Le Monde's editor Jean-Marie Colombani wrote.

Sarkozy, who has led in more than 100 opinion polls since the start of the year, said he did not believe the debate would change the pattern of the campaign.

"I don't think everything is decided by a debate, however much of a media event it may be," he told RTL radio.

An opinion poll published late on Wednesday put Sarkozy's support at 53.5 percent against 46.5 for Royal, with 86 percent saying they will not change their minds before the May 6 vote.

Royal denied the race was as good as over. "Opinion polls don't decide elections," she told France Inter radio.

The directors of her campaign team issued a statement, denouncing the Opinionway poll, the first issued on the debate, and asked "Who profits from a survey like this?"

PEAK AUDIENCE

The first and only debate in the election race was watched by a peak audience of 23.1 million viewers, more than half of France's 44.5 million voters.

One important viewer, centrist Francois Bayrou, who took third place in the first round of the election and whose 7 million voters could play a key role, appeared to favor Royal.

"I will not vote for Sarkozy," Le Monde quoted him saying.

Royal, often seen as a stilted speaker, attacked Sarkozy from the start, while the often abrasive former interior minister was at pains to restrain his gladiatorial instincts which delight his supporters but often alienate neutrals.

Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, one of the two journalists who moderated the debate, said Sarkozy was visibly holding back and left "not annoyed, a bit disappointed perhaps."

The Opinionway survey found Royal had done better on the environment and social issues, but on most others, ranging from the economy to jobs, security and foreign policy, Sarkozy was judged better by a clear majority.

Polls show that more people consider Sarkozy has the stature to be president, while Royal, seen as nicer and more caring, has faced repeated questions in the media over her competence.

Her combative performance in the debate may have removed some doubts about her ability to take on France's highest office but Sarkozy's lead means she still has a mountain to climb.

"To get back to his level, Segolene Royal would have had to achieve the impossible," conservative daily Le Figaro said. "But we're a long way from that."

Original article posted here.

weazl's French lady loses her cool, Bayrou supports her anyway. The plot thickens.

Candidates spar vigorously as French vote nears


.

By Elaine Sciolino

PARIS: He accused her of losing her cool. She accused him of lacking compassion.

Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and Ségolène Royal on the left went after each other Wednesday evening in the kind of vivid confrontation that has disappeared from the American scene, where the candidates avoid one another as much as possible.

The two-and-a-half-hour televised debate could determine the outcome of the French presidential election on Sunday.

At times, the candidates seemed like they were more in a local race than vying for the presidency of a nuclear power with the sixth-largest economy. Iraq and France's relationship with the United States, for example, never came up. Domestic issues, like the wisdom of the 35-hour workweek, public spending for the police and hospitals, and fighting crime took up more time than how to shape the identity of France.

Sarkozy, 52, the son of a Hungarian immigrant with minor aristocratic roots, and Royal, 53, the daughter of a career army officer, faced different challenges. Sarkozy had to avoid looking like a sexist bully; Royal had to prove herself presidential.

Sarkozy, the former interior and finance minister, had to fight off the demon that has tormented him: his image as an authoritarian figure with a volatile temper. For Royal, the debate was her last chance to turn around polls that consistently put Sarkozy in the lead.

The two candidates are competing for the nearly seven million voters who chose the centrist third-place candidate, François Bayrou, in the first round. Bayrou has refused to endorse either candidate.

Another variable is whether the nearly four million voters who voted for the far-right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the first round will heed his call to "abstain en masse," a move that could pull votes away from Sarkozy.

Royal, aware that this was her chance to prove that she is of greater substance than her critics paint her, was on the offensive from the start, repeatedly interrupting Sarkozy with the line, "Let me finish."

Sarkozy kept his temper in check, speaking more slowly and in a more modulated voice than usual.

Toward the end of the debate, Royal became agitated during a discussion of educating disabled children. She argued that the right had undone the good work that the left had been trying to do, and cast Sarkozy's position as "the height of political immorality."

She accused him of playing the compassion card even though his government had not delivered needed services, indignantly telling him he had described the plight of handicapped children "with a tear in your eye."

Sarkozy grabbed the opportunity to bore in on his point that she could not lead France in such a temperamental fashion.

"Calm down," he told her.

"No, I will not calm down," she replied.

"Do not point at me with this finger, with this——" he said.

"No. Yes," she said.

"With this index finger pointed, because frankly——"

"No, I will not calm down," she said. "No, I will not calm down. I will not calm down."

"To be president of the republic, you have to be calm," he said.

She responded: "Not when there are injustices. There are angers that are perfectly healthy because they correspond to people's suffering. There are angers I will have——"

He said, "Madame Royal, would you allow me to say one word?"

She finished her sentence: "Even when I am president of the republic."

His voice took on a patronizing tone. "I don't know why the usually calm Madame Royal has lost her nerve," he said.

Sarkozy repeatedly tried to paint Royal as uninformed. She tried to paint him as overbearing. There was equal-time interruption.

Making this race even more compelling, political analysts were divided on who had "won" the debate, Ségo or Sarko, as they call them here.

Sarkozy got points for not losing his temper. But Royal's losing her temper caused different reactions. Some found it exhilarating, a sign that the left would not be complacent. Others found it unnerving. No one found it boring.

"Sarkozy has lost," said Dominique Reynié, a professor of political science at Institut d'Études Politiques in Paris. "He didn't dominate the debate even though he's been the super-favorite since the beginning."

Nicole Bacharan, a political analyst at the same institute, said: "For me the winner is Sarkozy, it's clear. Ségolène was the challenger. She had more to prove. She was strong but Sarkozy invoked precise facts, in a more pragmatic and less ideological manner."

Royal repeatedly interrupted Sarkozy to get him to stop interrupting her, saying, "Let me finish," and things like, "Please stop interrupting me because I know your strategy really well."

But Sarkozy was also stopped short in mid-sentence over and over.

"Will you let me finish?" he asked at one point.

"No," Royal said.

"Ah," Sarkozy replied.

By midway, Royal's perpetual smile disappeared from her face. Their tone was reminiscent of a couple bickering at the breakfast table, with the husband barely restraining his sense of superiority and the wife attacking him for not listening to her.

"You understand me perfectly but you pretend you don't understand," Royal told her rival.

Even though she has a reputation of being condescending in meetings, she accused him of being condescending. Even though he has the reputation of losing his temper, she was the one who lost her temper during the debate.

During an argument about nuclear power, for example, Royal played schoolteacher, asking Sarkozy, "Do you know how much of electricity consumption in France comes from nuclear power?"

When Sarkozy said it was 50 percent, Royal corrected him, saying it was 17 percent. To that, Sarkozy replied, "No, Madame, that is not correct."

She lectured him "Go do your homework."

He argued back, "I may not be very informed about the issue, but I'm consistent."

Indeed, both were wrong: the answer is close to 80 percent.

Even though her attempt to appeal directly to women has not resonated, Royal pressed many women's issues throughout the debate.

She raised the case of a police officer who was raped recently in a Paris suburb because, Royal said, the money had been cut for her to have a partner.

She proposed retirement benefits for stay-at-home mothers. She described "choosing to raise one's children as, after all, the most beautiful profession."

Royal, who has often been accused of making factual errors, struggled to prove she was right.

"Let's go to the bitter end on every issue," she said. She also said, "I know all the topics well."

While they were speaking about the economy, she summed up her philosophy of leadership, saying, with a little smile, "I will be the president of what works."

Sarkozy replied, caustically, "People don't vote for us to go complicate what works, but on the contrary, to fix what doesn't."

Still, Sarkozy was gracious at the end, expressing his respect for Royal's "talent and competence." But she kept her distance, saying, "I abstain from personal judgments."

Original article posted here.

GOOD NEWS, however, Bayrou says "I will not vote for Sarkozy"

François Bayrou, à l'issue du duel télévisé : "Je ne voterai pas pour Sarkozy"

Ce débat, il aurait tant aimé en être un des deux protagonistes. Il s'était tellement persuadé que lui seul aurait été en mesure de prendre le dessus sur Nicolas Sarkozy. Alors, à l'issue du duel télévisé qu'il a regardé dans son bureau en compagnie d'une dizaine de proches, François Bayrou préfère s'abstenir de tout commentaire. Tout juste consentira-t-il – "en triple off" – qu'"elle s'en est plutôt bien sortie".


Le candidat centriste, qui a recueilli 18,57 % des suffrages au premier tour, s'était refusé, lors de sa conférence de presse du 25 avril, à donner toute consigne de vote entre les deux finalistes. Sur son propre choix, il était resté allusif : "A l'heure qu'il est, je ne sais pas ce que je ferai, mais je commence à savoir ce que je ne ferai pas", s'était-il contenté d'indiquer, tout en se laissant la possibilité de dire, "à titre personnel", pour qui il voterait, en fonction de l'évolution de la campagne électorale.

Sollicité par Le Monde, mercredi soir, M. Bayrou a assuré qu'il ne ferait "probablement pas" de déclaration avant le second tour. Il précisait toutefois : "Je ne voterai pas pour Sarkozy."

Cette fois-ci, il exprime donc explicitement son refus d'apporter son soutien à celui dont il considère qu'"il risque d'aggraver les déchirures du tissu social". Une position qui va à l'encontre du choix exprimé par la majeure partie des élus de l'UDF, notamment ses députés, qui se sont prononcés en faveur du candidat de la droite.

Seul Gilles Artigues, député (UDF) de la Loire, qui a annoncé qu'il voterait blanc au second tour, avait réagi dès l'issue du débat entre les deux finalistes. "On nous avait tellement dit que Nicolas Sarkozy dominerait le débat de la tête et des épaules que la prestation de Ségolène Royal constitue une réelle surprise", note l'adjoint au maire de Saint-Etienne, qui se félicite de "la reprise, par les deux candidats, de nombreux thèmes soutenus par François Bayrou". Pour M.Artigues, "ce débat a fait réapparaître l'affrontement stérile entre la droite et la gauche" et "renforcé [son] choix de vote blanc, malgré les pressions et les risques".

"L'UDF n'est pas un culbuto"

Jeudi matin, Anne-Marie Comparini, députée (UDF) du Rhône, interrogée sur RCF Lyon, a adopté une position identique. "Ce que j'ai entendu hier soir me confirme dans l'idée qu'il faut une troisième force libre et ni de droite ni de gauche, a estimé l'ancienne présidente de la région Rhône-Alpes. L'UDF n'est pas un culbuto qui va d'un côté ou de l'autre. Vous le savez, à l'UDF nous n'avons pas de consignes de vote. Mon vote sera donc strictement personnel. C'est un vote blanc qui signifie que ce n'est pas dans l'affrontement mais dans le rassemblement que la France se remettra d'aplomb."

Maigre consolation pour M. Bayrou, qui ne décolère pas du soutien apporté par la plupart des députés UDF à M.Sarkozy pour le second tour. Un ralliement dont le candidat de l'UMP n'a pas manqué de se prévaloir, mercredi, au cours du débat télévisé, assurant que, "dans la majorité, nos amis de l'UDF ont toute leur place". "D'ailleurs j'observe avec beaucoup de plaisir que la quasi-totalité des parlementaires et des élus de l'UDF m'ont rejoint", s'est-il félicité.

M. Bayrou, plus encore que du "lâchage" de ses élus, s'exaspère des "manœuvres de débauchage" entreprises par le président de l'UMP et ses "affidés". Au lendemain de son élimination au premier tour, il espérait tout à la fois peser sur un processus de recomposition politique et renforcer son groupe parlementaire. Les 6,8 millions de voix qu'il avait recueillies devaient suffire, à ses yeux, à lui assurer la reconnaissance de ses élus.

Si chacun jure de sa "fidélité" au président de l'UDF et de son soutien à la constitution d'un Parti démocrate, M. Bayrou a mal digéré les "effusions" avec lesquelles certains d'entre eux ont accompagné leur ralliement de second tour. "Ils n'étaient pas obligés", observe un proche du candidat centriste.

Après une semaine pendant laquelle il a continué à occuper le devant de la scène, ces défections massives ont renvoyé M. Bayrou à un isolement dont il pensait être sorti. Mercredi soir, il n'y avait pas un seul député dans son bureau pour suivre le débat

Original article posted here.

Back in France, more good news for Sego

Le Pen calls off vote

National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, who witnessed his party in one of its worst performances last weekend during the first round of voting, has called on his supporters to abstain in the coming runoff.

"It would be illusory and dangerous to vote for the Socialist candidate to avenge Nicolas Sarkozy's prevention of our programme. But it also would be insane to hand our votes to a candidate who continues to consider us extremists...abstain massively."

It is unclear how many people he is capable of swaying now that the strength of his support has been thoroughly discredited, but he does have a very strong group of loyalists who may now stay at home on election day. This may not eliminate Nicolas Sarkozy's advantage, but it can only hurt it.

Original article posted here.

Flashback to days gone by -- 14 years ago Sarkozy - Royal debate

Exclusive Debate Preview

Tomorrow night at 9:00pm (3:00pm EST) Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal will debate on live French television; the International Herald Tribune has a preview. But this won't be the first time these two candidates have come face to face on TV:

When they debated in a TV studio in 1993 they were both political youngsters. The resulting "don't speak to me like that!" outburst from Royal can now be watched on the Internet. She compared him to a "steamroller" and said, "All the television viewers can see that what you are saying is completely off-base!"

But both are formidable talkers, equally combative and prone to override television interviewers who try to butt in. But it would likely require a complete loss of cool, major mistakes or a blatantly misogynistic attack by Sarkozy — which all seem very unlikely from a now seasoned, media-savvy campaigner — for Wednesday's debate to significantly boost Royal's chances of being elected the first woman president of France. (...)

Aides of Royal and Sarkozy organized Wednesday's debate down to the smallest detail. The candidates will face off for two hours, seated at a wooden table and filmed by at least eight cameras. They drew lots to see who will sit where. Fittingly, chance put Royal on the left of the TV screen, and Sarkozy on the right

Original article posted here.

It may be an uphill battle for weazl's French choice

TV debate last chance for desperate Royal

(But she definitely is winning the award for best use of internet technology)

SEGOLENE Royal, the left-wing finalist for the French presidency, has appeared to acknowledge that she needed a near-miracle from a debate on Wednesday to save her from defeat next Sunday by the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy.

As opinion polls showed Mr Sarkozy maintaining a five-point lead over the 53-year-old Socialist, Ms Royal threw caution to the winds and said that she could appoint François Bayrou, the centrist who was eliminated on April 22, as her prime minister.

Ms Royal needs most of Mr Bayrou’s seven million voters from the first round if she is to have a chance of defeating Mr Sarkozy, leader of the governing Union for a Popular Movement, on May 6.

On Saturday she held a friendly televised debate with the defeated candidate in which she appealed across party lines. She recognised the challenge facing her yesterday as Mr Sarkozy rallied 40,000 supporters in a show of strength at a Paris stadium.

"It is difficult, because I think there have been 200 polls saying that Nicolas Sarkozy is going to win, but voters are free," she said on Canal+ television.

:He is going to have to accept debate and especially account for his past actions," she added.

The pair are to meet in their only debate of the campaign on Wednesday evening. About 20 million people are expected to watch.

French presidential debates, staged since 1974 in the days before the run-off, have a history of turning the tide.

Ms Royal’s team are hoping that as a woman she can unsettle Mr Sarkozy, 52, whose weak point is a hot temper and a tendency to bully.

Mr Sarkozy said on television that he rejected the male chauvinist idea that debating with a woman was different from a man.

"You should not reduce Mme Royal to her femininity – as great as hers is," he said. "She is a politician. The question for the French is not whether to have a man or a woman but to have someone who measures up to the job."

While Mr Sarkozy avoids personal attacks on Ms Royal, his women aides are ridiculing her.

Warming up Mr Sarkozy’s crowd in the Berçy stadium in Paris, Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Defence Minister, said: “France does not need someone who changes her ideas as often as she changes skirts," she said.

"She is someone who does not even know who is governing in Afghanistan, has no idea of defence and who sets national energy policy on the back of an envelope."

A CSA poll for Le Parisien reported that 57 per cent believed that Ms Royal was sympathique (likeable) while only 29 per cent held this opinion of Mr Sarkozy.

Meanwhile, 65 per cent found Mr Sarkozy "solid” while only 24 per cent attributed the quality to Ms Royal.

Original article posted here.

A kinda nice Sunday chat

Good moon rising for Sego. Looks like those poll numbers will be shifting quite soon towards the left

Sarkozy in furor over axed debate

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- France's conservative presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to defend himself in a free speech row on Friday after a defeated candidate accused him of stifling a televised election debate.

Francois Bayrou said Sarkozy had subverted basic democratic freedoms of free speech by using his media and business contacts to pull the plug on Saturday's scheduled debate on Canal+ television between him and Socialist challenger Segolene Royal.

Sarkozy retaliated, saying voters were interested in a debate between the two finalists -- him and Royal -- and brushed off Bayrou's comments as sour grapes.

"I think Francois Bayrou must be very disappointed and I put it down to bitterness" at being eliminated on Sunday. "It's pretty insulting towards me, but I don't hold it against him," he told reporters.

Sarkozy's campaign director Claude Gueant gave a more heated response, saying the accusations were a baseless slander and denouncing what he said were "Stalinist tactics" by the centrist Bayrou.

Socialist sources later said Saturday's debate would now be carried by the independent BFMTV channel and its sister radio station RMC radio, though neither broadcaster immediately confirmed the report.

Royal is keen to use the debate to flag shared values between herself and Bayrou, and draw away moderates attracted to Sarkozy's energy and drive but worried by his hardliner image and perceived overarching ambition.

Kingmaker Bayrou

Since his strong showing on Sunday Bayrou has sought to impose himself as a power-broker in the presidential elections and parliamentary polls due in June.

Royal and Sarkozy are scrambling to win over his almost 7 million voters. Royal proposed the debate to assess possible points of convergence with the leader of the small centrist UDF party.

Asked on RTL radio if he was accusing Sarkozy of asking Canal+ television to cancel the debate, Bayrou said: "I don't have the proof but I am certain of it."

Bayrou said he based his accusations on testimony from people inside Canal+ and "all those who were interested in the debate and intended to broadcast it."

"I say with certainty that we have before our eyes today the proof of this propensity or choice of Nicolas Sarkozy to control the news and debate, and this is harmful for France," he said.

Bayrou's accusations could scare off moderate voters drawn to Sarkozy's energy and drive but worried by the former interior minister's strident image and hardline views on crime, immigration and national identity.

Concerned by a gathering "Anyone But Sarkozy" campaign marshalled by leftwing opponents and already stung by Bayrou's sustained attack on their candidate, Sarkozy's camp responded angrily to the centrist's latest salvo.

"It's slander, a slanderous insinuation," said Sarkozy's normally restrained campaign director Gueant. "It is extremely serious to make such remarks. These are Stalinist tactics. To assert things without proof is extremely serious," he told Reuters.

Bayrou has so far ruled out endorsing either candidate, but his criticism of Royal's economic program was soft compared to his withering attacks on Sarkozy.

"I am not here to say how I am going to vote. I said that I would do so, if I had to, later," Bayrou said on RTL.

Sarkozy censorship?

The row began when on Thursday when Canal+ pulled out of a plan to broadcast the Royal-Bayrou debate citing election rules governing equal airtime for candidates ahead of a May 6 run-off between Royal and Sarkozy.

Bayrou campaigned loudly against Sarkozy's links to big business and media groups, notably the main TF1 TV station owned by Martin Bouygues, a close Sarkozy friend who runs the media, construction and telecommunications conglomerate Bouygues.

"I think all the pressures that have taken place, notably within a media-financial system to which Nicolas Sarkozy is very linked, have no reason to exist in a democratic country where freedom of speech and debate is very important," said Royal.

Michel Boyon, chairman of France's broadcasting watchdog said he was outraged by the suggestion his CSA had put pressure on Canal+ to axe the debate and told the parties involved to stop blaming it for their problems.

A statement issued by the watchdog denied it had ordered Canal+ and two other broadcasters to drop the debate.

"There is Sarkozy censorship in this affair, I'm deeply convinced of it. We know that Sarkozy always operates like that, through intimidation," senior Socialist Jean-Marc Ayrault said on LCI television.

Around half of the deputies from Bayrou's UDF party have rallied to Sarkozy's cause, but Ayrault said that was because Sarkozy's UMP party had threatened to run candidates against them in June parliamentary polls unless they backed the UMP leader.

Polls give Sarkozy the edge over Royal but she has narrowed the gap in recent surveys. A TNS Sofres poll this week showed 46 percent of Bayrou's voters support Royal, against 25 percent for Sarkozy and 29 percent who have yet to make up their minds, although other polls have showed support roughly evenly split.

Original article posted here.

Ségolène Royal shines and gains with her debate with Francois Bayrou

Satisfaction unanime au PS après le débat entre Ségolène Royal et François Bayrou

Alors que certaines déclarations de Ségolène Royal en direction des électeurs centristes avaient provoqué des tensions au sein du PS, l'unanimité semble revenu parmi les socialistes, samedi 28 avril, après le débat inédit avec François Bayrou. "Les présents ont tiré avantage de ce dialogue. L'absent aura été le seul perdant", a résumé le premier secrétaire François Hollande, désignant Nicolas Sarkozy.



Alain Krivine entre critique et discipline

Alain Krivine, porte-parole de la LCR, a été critique, voyant dans le débat "un grand compromis entre une partie de la droite et une partie de la gauche, avec un porte-parole du centre-droit et une porte-parole du centre gauche, pour développer des programmes qui sont tout à fait solubles l'un dans l'autre". Interrogé sur France Info, le proche d'Olivier Besancenot a précisé que la LCR ne remettait pas en cause son soutien : "Cela ne change rien à notre consigne de vote qui est de transformer le second tour en un référendum contre Sarkozy." - (Avec AFP)
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"C'était serein et en même temps sans concession", selon Elisabeth Guigou. Très proche de Ségolène Royal, Julien Dray a vu dans le débat avec M. Bayrou "un booster considérable pour la dernière semaine", alors que "l'énervement" domine, selon lui, chez le candidat UMP.

Plus à gauche du PS, le satisfecit est similaire, chez le sénateur Jean-Luc Mélenchon, qui s'était élevé contre l'idée d'une alliance PS-UDF. "Pugnace et convaincante, Ségolène Royal n'a rien cédé sur ses propositions. Il n'a pas été question des ministres UDF et c'est parfait." La candidate PS a démontré "qu'elle avait raison de vouloir ce débat avec François Bayrou", a-t-il ajouté.
"UN MOUVEMENT QUI INVERSE LA PENTE"

Les socialistes se sont aussi réjouis que Ségolène Royal n'ait de nouveau évoqué pendant le débat la possibilité de "ministres UDF". "Elle a clos l'épisode, évité le piège de la confusion, est revenue aux fondamentaux de son pacte, a tenu bon sur ses valeurs économiques et sociales", s'est félicité le fabiusien Claude Bartolone. "Ceux qui auraient voulu mener des procès en sorcellerie sur ce thème en seront pour leurs frais", a dit Julien Dray.

Les membres du PS ont surtout souligné que le débat Royal-Bayrou était défavorable à Nicolas Sarkozy, qui n'a pas mâché ses mots vendredi et samedi, dénonçant les "petits combines" de ses rivaux, occupés à "bavasser" dans un "grand hôtel".

"Il est dans une démarche politique traditionnelle : exclusives, intimidations et débauchages individuels", a estimé François Hollande, fustigeant le "mépris déplacé" de M. Sarkozy. Le candidat UMP "a montré sa vraie nature, toute sa morgue", a renchéri le député strauss-kahnien Jean-Marie Le Guen.

"Non seulement le débat a eu lieu en dépit de lui, non seulement ce débat permet un mouvement qui inverse la pente dans le sens de Ségolène Royal mais de surcroît la candidate socialiste a gagné en crédibilité aux yeux de tous", s'est réjoui Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

VOTRE AVIS

A qui a profité la tenue du débat entre Mme Royal et M. Bayrou ?

Ségolène Royal.	71.9 %
Nicolas Sarkozy.	16.4 %
Ni l'un ni l'autre.	11.7 %

Nombre de votants : 17926

Original article posted here.

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