Five-minute briefing: The Amazing Electoral
Race, France
French right-wing presidential candidate
Nicolas Sarkozy poses prior to a broadcast
interview by journalist Patrick Poivre
d'Arvor (not pictured), 25 April
2007 at French television channel
TF1 in Boulogne-Billancourt. French
presidential rivals Nicolas Sarkozy
and Segolene Royal, trained their sights
today on the defeated centrist candidate
Francois Bayrou whose seven million
voters hold the key to next week's
run-off ballot. — AFP Photo
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The first round of the French elections were completed on April 22, leaving France two extreme choices for who should succeed Jacques Chirac as president: rightist Nicolas Sarkozy, who came out of the first round with a majority of 30 percent, and leftist Ségolene Royal, who won 25.2 percent of the votes.
There was a record turnout of 85 percent in this round, which had a total of twelve candidates, including Jean-Marie Le Pen who had shockingly made it to the final round during the last elections. Though there were twelve candidates, there were three clear favourites: Sarkozy (Gaullist party or UGP), Royal (Socialist) and centrist François Bayrou, who got 18.3 percent of the votes.
The second round will take place on May 6. Le Monde has reported that both Sarkozy and Royal have extended their hands to Bayrou; the votes of France’s centrists could tip the balance either way.
Though it seems that Sarkozy, who is a former interior minister, will ultimately win, it does not mean that France is finally done with its love for socialism. If he wins, he will win because he has shown himself to be less wishy-washy than Royal, who made some blunders early in her campaign, and has caused a little distaste at her presented image of mother-figure who sings the Marseillaise and wants a French flag flying from every family’s window. This impresses the centrist bourgeois bohemians (‘les bobos’) as rather American-instant-patriot.
Royal, who is aiming to become the first female French president, nevertheless has a chance of winning, since many consider Sarkozy to be a ‘mini-Bush’. He is for dismantling the French social-service system and towards the end of his election campaign spoke of his strong Christian beliefs and how France needed to be less militantly secularist.
At the same time, there are some who think a Sarkozy-headed government is necessary to jolt the leftists into unifying and coming up to scratch. As one voter put it, ‘you need a Reagan before you can get a Clinton’. It is not so much France opening up to capitalism, but rather turning away from what is substandard in an act of negative enforcement.
Lack of unity amongst France’s left wing was originally what led to Le Pen’s beating Lionel Jospin in the final round of the last elections. This happened despite his racial tendencies—he is against immigrants and is currently facing a lawsuit for stating that the Second World War was ‘not so inhumane.’ Most see the socialists of France to have become directionless, thus leading to their loss of supports, even in a country that has historically had a large number of leftist voters.
Jacques Chirac’s regime has lasted for twelve years and ends with the French economy in a sluggish state, with unemployment and debt being the chief concerns for most voters. The two party candidates however have both made national identity their campaigns’ focal point. Royal has given out an impression of being the Wonder Woman defender of social justice who listens to the people, while Sarkozy, who idealises Pope John Paul II, says France needs ‘a new Renaissance’ with authority and ‘a new French dream of a fraternal republic.’ All told, it will be an extremely tight race.
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