Sarkozy victory 'extraordinaire' like a screenplay

FRANCE: The country Nicolas Sarkozy is about to take over is a land of hope and fear

FRANCE:The country Nicolas Sarkozy is about to take over is a land of hope and fear. Lara Marlowe, in Paris, analyses the strengths, weaknesses and paradoxes of the next president of France

"C'est extraordinaire!" is Nicolas Sarkozy's favourite expression. He uses it most often to describe real or imagined criticism of himself, as in: "When I talk about the nation, I'm accused of being a nationalist. When I talk about immigration, I'm accused of being a racist. When I talk about patriotism, I'm accused of being a fascist. C'est quand-même extraordinaire!"

Whatever one thinks of Sarkozy, you've got to hand it to him: his victory in the French presidential election last night may not have been a surprise, but it was nothing short of extraordinaire; the real-life culmination of a Hollywood screenplay entitled "The Fabulous Destiny of Nicolas Sarkozy".

Roll the clocks back a few years. Bernadette Chirac, the outgoing first lady who was allegedly gifted with infallible political judgment, told her entourage that Sarkozy would never become president of France. He was too short, too foreign-looking and had no provincial roots, hitherto a requirement for every French leader.

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Nothing predisposed Sarkozy to becoming the sixth president of the Fifth Republic. As the extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen ungraciously reminded France during the campaign, three out of four of Sarkozy's grandparents were foreign.

On his father's side, he is descended from minor Hungarian aristocracy; his father, Pal Nagy Bosca y Sarkozy, used to tell him: "With a name like yours, you'll never get anywhere in France."

His maternal grandfather, who raised him, was Benedict Mallah, a wealthy Jew from Salonica.

Sarkozy failed the entrance exam to "Sciences Po" because his English wasn't up to scratch. Unlike the failed socialist candidate Ségolène Royal - and most of the country's political elite - he did not attend the École Nationale d'Administration (ENA). That was probably a blessing.

Taunting the socialist benches of the National Assembly, Sarkozy once said: "You don't talk like the people do; that is why you lost them." Sarkozy's directness may be his greatest advantage. Time and again, voters have told me they liked him "because they understand what he says."

The French are also fascinated by Sarkozy's thirst for power; if he wants it so badly, he must deserve it. There's a good dose of revenge in Sarkozy's ambition.

"Je vais les niquer tous," (I'm going to screw them all) a fellow journalist once heard Sarkozy mutter repeatedly during a helicopter journey.

Despite Sarkozy's outsider status, there now seems to have been a certain inevitability to his rise. Within months of joining the Raffarin government as interior minister in 2002, he became the most popular member of the cabinet.

Action - or at least the media semblance thereof - was the secret to his success. Tony Blair's government was furious with France for allowing thousands of Kurds and Afghans to pour across the English Channel? Sarkozy closed the camp at Sangatte. French lorry drivers threatened an umpteenth strike? Sarkozy broke the strike in one day, by threatening to confiscate their licences.

When the former prime minister Alain Juppé founded the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) in November 2002, Sarkozy insisted that Juppé be given a two rather than three-year mandate as leader. Was he already plotting his own take-over of the party?

He and his wife Cecilia refused the seats reserved for them in the second row at the launch, ostentatiously placing themselves front and centre. A year later, Sarkozy announced he intended to succeed president Jacques Chirac.

There followed a battle of Shakespearean - or Oedipal? - proportions, with Sarkozy constantly vaunting his superiority to Mr Chirac. The president's rule was "a house of cards" on the verge of collapse, Sarkozy told the 237 right-wing deputies he invited to dinner shortly before Bastille Day, 2004.

Chirac made a last attempt to call the unwanted upstart heir to order. "I take decisions; he executes them," Chirac told the nation in his annual televised interview.

Having provoked Chirac, Sarkozy then adopted the same strategy he would use during the campaign against Royal; he played the poised statesman who refuses to respond to aggression.

Against the better judgment of his closest advisors, including his wife, Sarkozy resigned from his post as finance minister to stand for president of the UMP.

Commentators widely compared his November 28th, 2004 "coronation" as head of the party to Napoleon Bonaparte's lavish consecration almost exactly 200 years earlier.

Napoleon-like, Mr Sarkozy spoke of his "grand design." Unlike Royal, who asked voters what they wanted, Sarkozy told them what they needed.

The losing socialist candidate accused Sarkozy of "brutalising" France. She failed to understand that the country may be at a stage where it wants to be "brutalised".

Sarkozy promises to share his energy, determination and confidence with the country, as if by blood transfusion.

The outline of Sarkozy's presidential programme was already present in his November 2004 acceptance speech: the rehabilitation of work, revision of the 35-hour week and the welfare system, the abolition of death duties so the French can pass on "an inheritance built by the sweat of the brow."

When Sarkozy finds himself out of sync with the French mood, he never publicly changes policy. He opposed the law banning the wearing of Islamic headscarves in French schools, but shut up when he saw how popular it was. He proposed US-style affirmative action to integrate French minorities, but stopped talking about it when it raised hackles.

His condemnation of French "arrogance" in opposing the invasion of Iraq went down badly, so during the campaign he repeated that the US had made a grave error.

France's new president is a man of paradoxes. The son and grandson of immigrants, he takes pride in having expelled record numbers of would-be immigrants from France.

He is a tough crime-buster who yearns to be loved; a short man who once scratched out his height on his driver's license, and mysteriously appeared the same height as George W Bush (who is some 15cm taller) on the re-touched photograph of their meeting.

The self-styled "spokesman of the people" is fascinated by pop stars, celebrities and millionaires.

The reactions of two acquaintances this weekend seemed to summarise national schizophrenia about Sarkozy. An elderly woman who holds dual French and Irish nationality told me: "I can't help liking that young fellow - he's so un-French!" She even romanticised the "look of sadness" she always detects in his eyes.

A neighbour in central Paris, a businessman whose company trades in Asia, told me he'd go early to the polls, then leave the country until the celebrations blow over. "I can't stand the thought of France being in Sarkozy's hands for the next five years," he said.

"He and his gang are mafiosi. I don't want to hear and see the sarkozystes gloating."

The country that Nicolas Sarkozy is about to take over is a land of hope and fear.

Will he teach the French the merits of hard work, usher in prosperity and full employment by the end of his five-year term, as promised?

Or will he cow the press - a process that has already started - inflame race relations, pit rich against poor and preside over war on the immigrant banlieues? These possible outcomes, positive and negative, are part of the Sarkozy paradox.

And they are not mutually exclusive.