Sarko's losing words
Sarkozy contemplating defeat?
Not for the first time in the campaign, President Nicolas Sarkozy reflected publicly yesterday on the possibility of losing. “I think records are made to be beaten. So you can’t be sad if someone else takes your place because, after all, that’s the rule,” Sarkozy told the sports daily L’Équipe.
“It’s the rule in sports and it’s the rule in politics: at a certain point everyone should realise they’ve been lucky to do what they have done,” he said.
Sarkozy, who trails his rival François Hollande in the polls with just a week to go until the run-off, has made defeatist noises before. In January, during a trip to French Guyana, he said he realised he may not win re-election. “For the first time in my life I am facing the end of my career.”
May Day
Next Tuesday, May 1st, is shaping up to be a big day on the campaign, with three separate rallies taking place in Paris. The Socialist Party will join the annual Labour Day demonstration, while a few kilometres away the National Front is due to hold its yearly Joan of Arc demonstration. Not to be left out, Sarkozy has called a gathering of his own in celebration of what he termed “real work”. Sarkozy’s move has incensed some on the left, who accuse him of trying to reclaim May 1st for the right. Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry yesterday called Sarkozy’s idea for a march to celebrate “real work” a “shameful” and “provocative” act. “If there is violence on May 1st because of this provocation, the candidate Sarkozy will be responsible,” she said.
Villepin sharpens knife
One of the risks Sarkozy is running by pursuing far-right voters so conspicuously for the run-off is that he could alienate the bulk of centrist voters who normally decide French elections. Centrist candidate François Bayrou, who received 9.1 per cent of the vote in the first round, is being courted by Sarkozy and Hollande. He has not endorsed either, but his comments this week suggest he is leaning towards the socialist.
Another member of the right-wing “family”, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, said he was “alarmed” by Sarkozy’s embrace of National Front positions, and hinted that he could back Hollande.
Villepin’s stance is hardly surprising – he and Sarkozy loathe one another – but as comments from centrist members of the president’s UMP party this week indicate, his reservations about the strategy are shared by many.
An endorsement to avoid
Hollande’s camp reacted with indignation to the cover of yesterday’s edition of The Economist, whose headline, alongside a picture of the socialist, was: “The rather dangerous Monsieur Hollande.” Interviewed on radio, Hollande’s policy director, Michel Sapin, called the magazine “anti-French” and “anti-socialist”. Privately, however, Hollande’s team are probably quite pleased. An endorsement from The Economist is not the sort of thing a candidate for the French presidency needs – certainly not a socialist one. And in any case, there is always time for him to convince liberal sceptics in London.
In 1981, The Economist urged French voters not to back socialist François Mitterrand, only to offer him enthusiastic support when he sought re-election seven years later.