There are pluses and minuses, but the French president's glass seems at least half-full, writes RUADHAN MAC CORMAIC
HAD NICOLAS Sarkozy had his way, the symbolic milestone of the mid-way point in his presidential term this month might have passed a little more quietly than it has. But not much is going the French president’s way at home these days, and the occasion has shone an unflattering light on a government which Sarkozy himself concedes is saddled with a traditional “mid-term curse”.
A turbulent autumn dominated by political scandals and internal dissent has brought the president’s approval ratings to their lowest level since he took office in 2007, with a meagre 39 per cent of voters declaring themselves satisfied with him, according to an Ifop poll last week.
This followed two drawn-out controversies that raised questions about the president’s much-vaunted political judgment. First there was a furore over a book in which culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand wrote about paying young male prostitutes in Thailand, followed almost immediately by news that the president’s 23-year-old son, Jean Sarkozy, was a candidate for the chairmanship of the agency that runs La Défense, the financial district west of Paris. Although the debate over Mitterrand’s book died down and Jean Sarkozy eventually withdrew his candidature to defuse the nepotism row, the impression of an aloof leadership out of touch with the popular mood wounded a president who came to power promising to restore popular faith in politics.
To compound matters, up to two dozen senators from the ruling UMP party – many of them already irked by a carbon tax that Sarkozy has championed but which remains unpopular with voters – have defied the leadership by refusing to support plans to abolish a local business tax.
With the Élysée trying hard to reassert itself this week, however, government ministers have found themselves instead having to answer questions on the media’s latest fixation: whether Nicolas Sarkozy really was taking a pickaxe to the Berlin Wall on the night of November 9th, 1989 – as he claimed on his Facebook page this week – or whether he actually visited a week later. “This is not an interesting debate . . . It’s trivial,” said an exasperated foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, on France Inter radio yesterday morning.
As government spokesmen have been keen to point out, the president can claim some significant achievements in his two and a half years in office. He was praised for his dynamic presidency of the European council last year, when he had to deal with Irish voters’ rejection of the Lisbon Treaty, the outbreak of war between Russia and Georgia and the global financial crisis.
At home, he appointed a broad-based, multi-ethnic cabinet, passed minimum service legislation to keep trains moving and schools open during strikes, pushed university reforms and managed – for now, at least – to neutralise the National Front as a political force.
Moreover, France has resisted the economic crisis better than other major economies, and while unemployment is approaching the 10 per cent mark and remains a major worry to voters, the French economy – oft-maligned, by Sarkozy and others, before the crisis – was one of the first in the West to emerge from recession.
Officially, the Élysée is trying to surmount its current problems by admitting that some errors have been made, while stressing the government’s achievements. But the opposition sees a connection between the sliding ratings and a renewed focus on crime, immigration and national identity.
Crime-fighting rhetoric has picked up, while minister for immigration Eric Besson has announced a debate on “what it means to be French”.
But while the Socialist Party is taking heart from Sarkozy’s troubles, and some party members have been whispering that the president might be beatable in 2012, most analysts tend to be more cautious. After all, Sarkozy currently faces no serious challenger from within his political family and the Socialists remain in disarray, riven by internal rows and unable to agree on a candidate of their own.
François Bayrou, a centrist who came third in the first round of the presidential election in 2007, hoped to attract disaffected voters on the right and left to his anti-Sarkozy platform, but when he – and the Socialist Party – put their case to French voters in the European elections in June, both suffered disappointing reversals.
Even more reassuring for the president will be the knowledge that, viewed with the perspective of recent political history, things are not going too badly for him. Much as he may begrudge Jacques Chirac his 76 per cent approval ratings – the former president is currently the most popular politician in France, recent polls suggest – Sarkozy might remind himself that at the same point in his own first term, Chirac found himself cohabiting uneasily with a Socialist prime minister after gambling on a surprise election that resulted in his party’s defeat.