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-Election 2012

French election: final polls suggest swing to Sarkozy

2012-05-06

Socialist voters face a nervous wait for the results of today's presidential election runoff between Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande after final opinion polls following Wednesday's fiery television debate revealed a late surge in favour of the outgoing president, who has trailed his leftwing rival throughout the race. The polls indicated that Hollande was still on track to win the second round runoff vote, but revealed that the gap between the presidential rivals had narrowed from 10 percentage points a week ago to between four and six. An Ifop poll for Paris-Match showed Hollande at 52% and Sarkozy at 48%. On Friday, before the official midnight deadline for campaigning to end, Hollande warned his supporters not to consider the election as being in the bag. At his last campaign meeting in Périgueux in south-west France, he said the battle was not yet won. "It's true that you are confident and you want to win. I feel it," he told the crowd and sounding a note of caution. "I don't want to be a killjoy, but don't make what could be the fatal mistake of thinking that the game is already over that you needn't turn out. I have to tell you that I am sure of nothing. This victory is still not certain." At his final campaign meeting at the Sables-d'Olonne on France's Atlantic coast, Sarkozy, who needs to pick up votes from Marine Le Pen's far-right Front National, which scored nearly 18% in the first round of polling, was still confident that he could snatch victory and promised that Sunday's result would be a "surprise". "Each of you has the future of the country in your hands," he said. "Nobody's vote counts more than another. You have no idea how many things are at play on this knife edge." If the Socialist candidate is elected the 24th president of the French republic, Hollande and his supporters are expected to hold a party at the Bastille on his return to Paris . His campaign team has refused to give details of any planned celebrations, for fear of appearing too confident and spooking the electorate. However, the square, former site of the notorious prison overrun and later destroyed during the French Revolution, is seen as the most likely venue for a mass gathering because of its powerful association with the left. As Sarkozy has discovered to his cost, celebrations matter in politics. His decision to savour his 2007 victory at one of the most expensive restaurants, Fouquet's, on the Champs Elysées – followed by a holiday on the yacht of a billionaire businessman friend – must have seemed like a good idea at the time. But the image came back to haunt him as the global economic crisis struck, and ultimately served to reinforce the impression of a showy lifestyle and a sense that he was acting as a "president of the rich". During the election race, it was a marked contrast to Hollande's approach, as the Socialist artfully positioned himself as Sarkozy's polar opposite: Monsieur Normal, more Swatch than Rolex and "a man of the people". It was telling that, like Ms Bruni-Sarkozy, Hollande's partner, the former journalist Valérie Trierweiler, was often on the campaign trail, but usually some way behind, out of the camera shot. Hollande has been circumspect about his choice of prime minister and cabinet posts if he wins, insisting that he has not drawn up a shortlist. Speculation has centred on his long-time friend and supporter Jean-Marc Ayrault, 62, deputy mayor of Nantes and head of the Socialist party group in the National Assembly, and Martine Aubry, 61, Hollande's rival for the party's presidential nomination and head of the party. He has promised to have an equal number of women in his government and to reintroduce a ministry of women's rights.

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-Election 2012

Hollande builds lead as Sarkozy allies despair

2012-04-19

Confronted with plunging polls and deserting allies, President Nicolas Sarkozy faces the prospect of a rout in the two-round French presidential election starting this weekend, with senior members of his government already said to be certain of defeat. Supporters of the front-running Socialist candidate, François Hollande, could scarcely contain their euphoria when they gathered in Lille for their last big rally on Tuesday night before French electors go to the polls on Sunday. They interrupted the candidate's speech endlessly with chants of "François president, François president". "You are well informed," Mr Hollande quipped. "It is possible we are going to win. It's not certain... but, yes, I feel the hope rising." New polls published yesterday suggested that Mr Hollande, 57, was leading the field of 10 candidates in the first round with up to 29 per cent of the vote. He had extended his lead over Mr Sarkozy to between two and four points. In voting intentions for the two-candidate, second round on 6 May, Mr Hollande now leads the President by a "landslide" margin of 14 to 16 per cent. In a series of damning, private remarks, reported by the Le Canard Enchainé newspaper, senior members of President Sarkozy's government said that defeat now seemed inevitable. "The carrots are cooked," the Prime Minister, François Fillon, was quoted as saying. "[Sarkozy's] strategy of campaigning on hard-right issues was a serious mistake." The former centre-right prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, was reported to have said privately: "There is no chance of us winning." The President has also suffered a series of desertions. It was reported earlier this week that the former President Jacques Chirac intended to switch sides and vote for Mr Hollande. A clutch of former Sarkozy ministers and supporters, from the right, left and centre of French politics, have also declared they will vote for the socialist. They include Martin Hirsch and Fadéla Amara, two of Mr Sarkozy's ministerial recruits from the Left after his 2007 election and three former centre-right Chirac-era ministers, Azouz Begag, Corinne Lepage and Brigitte Girardin. The President has fought an energetic but erratic campaign. He began by warning that France needed tough medicine to escape recession. But he then switched to a hard-right message to reclaim votes from Marine Le Pen's National Front. In recent weeks, Mr Sarkozy warned that French "identity" was menaced by a tide of illegal immigration, Islamist terrorism and halal meat. Last Sunday, he stole abruptly -- and without acknowledgement -- Mr Hollande's argument that the European Central Bank should be allowed to pump reflationary cash into Eurozone economies (a policy that Mr Sarkozy had opposed with Germany). Mr Sarkozy's sharp right turn propelled him into a narrow lead in first- round opinion polls but that support now appears to have dribbled back to Ms Le Pen. In polls published yesterday, she regained third place with around 17 per cent of the vote. The hard-left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose lurid anti-capitalist rhetoric has illuminated an uninspiring campaign, fell back to fourth place with around 13-14 per cent. Through all these twists and turns, Mr Hollande has held his nerve. At the Lille rally, he said he would bring a three-part approach to the economic crisis: "responsibility" (deficit cuts, mostly through tax rises); "growth" (EU capital investment programmes and the reflationary printing of euros); and "solidarity" (help for poorer people and poorer EU countries). France is thereby boned... But if enough of them choose to be boned, they have nothing to complain about later. They're socialists for goodness sakes. Not only will they complain later, they'll blame others for their misery. Pro'ly us... Still, the limitations of "Hollandism" were apparent. He failed to fill a giant pop-concert venue from which most seats had been cleared. The crowd of 15,000 cheered his rhetoric against "big finance" but became fidgety as Mr Hollande explained the minutiae of his plans. The Socialist top brass, seated nearby, were, however, two steps ahead of Mr Hollande. Their chatter was not about the first or second rounds but the "third round": who would be "in" and who would be "out" in the first centre-left government for a decade. The favourite to be Mr Hollande's prime minister is the Socialist party leader, Martine Aubry, daughter of former European Commission President Jacques Delors. All in the family, a familiar theme in Europe the past three thousand years... Mr Hollande and Ms Aubry briefly held up one another's arms in a victory salute at the Lille rally. However, their stiff body language suggested the prime-ministerial choice has yet to be made. The opening round of the presidential election this weekend is the first of four polling days in just over two months. On Sunday, French voters will choose between the 10 candidates. The top two go on to the second round on 6 May, after which the winner will hold office for five years, not seven as used to be the case. He (never yet she) will be the ultimate arbiter of French policy but will not run the government day to day. To do that, the President will choose a Prime Minister. He, or possibly she, will seek to win a parliamentary majority in the lower house of parliament. Then "legislative elections" will be fought, once again over two rounds, on 10 and 17 June.

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Europe

French parliament to vote on full face veil ban

2010-07-07

[Al Arabiya Latest] A French bill to ban full-face veils worn by some Muslim women in public will go to parliament on Tuesday, bringing closer a measure which critics argue is hard to enforce and may be unconstitutional. Supporters of a ban on full-face veils in France, home to the European Union's largest Muslim minority, argue that wearing garments which hide women's faces violates the republican ideals of secularism and gender equality. Opponents say only a tiny minority of Muslim women wear the full veil, known as a niqab or burqa, and that the legislation is a step towards tighter restraints on individual freedom. France already bans Muslim headscarves and other religious symbols from schools. Violating the constitution "We were opposed to the veil even before the start of the debate... and we think that a general ban is absolutely not the solution, " Mohammed Moussaoui, President of the French Muslim Councilsaid. Most voters back a ban, polls have shown, but legal experts warn it could violate the constitution. "It's going to increase feelings of being ostracized in part of the Muslim community, even parts where women don't wear the niqab," said Jean Bauberot, sociologist at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at Paris' Sorbonne University. The Council of State, the top administrative court which advises the government on the preparation of new laws, said in March a ban could be unlawful. France's Socialist opposition decided Tuesday to boycott a vote on a bill outlawing the full-face Islamic veil in protest at the sweeping ban that will apply to all public places. Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry told deputies at a meeting that while they should not vote against the bill, they should not take part in a vote scheduled for July 13, a Socialist party official told AFP. "We are against the burqa but we believe that the means chosen to outlaw it are not good," said the party official. Fines and jail term The proposed law would impose fines of €150 ($190 ) on those caught wearing the veil and up to €30,000 and a one-year jail term to men who force their wives or daughters to cover their faces. President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP party and its right-wing allies hold a strong majority in parliament and the bill could easily pass without support from the opposition Socialists. But the government has made a point of seeking strong bi-partisan support for the legislation. Debate on the burqa has raged in France for a year and Sarkozy has described the Muslim face coverings as degrading to women. His critics however see the bill as a political ploy to pander to far-right voters by taking aim at a tiny minority of women who wear the full veil. Fewer than 2,000 women wear the full-face veil in France, according to the interior ministry. Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, who will present the bill at the National Assembly later Tuesday, insisted the law was about upholding French values of secularism, gender equality and promoting integration. "The law is not about the veil, but about deliberately covering the face in any way," she was quoted as saying by the daily Liberation. "It is not a question of religion," she said. "The republic lives with its face uncovered." The National Assembly lower house is set to hold a vote on July 13 following debate this week and the bill is expected to then go to the Senate in September.

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Europe

Europe's Socialists Tanking

2009-09-30

A specter is haunting Europe -- the specter of Socialism's slow collapse. I wouldn't get too excited. The pendulum swings back and forth even in the Olde Countrie. Even in the midst of one of the greatest challenges to capitalism in 75 years, involving a breakdown of the financial system due to "irrational exuberance," greed and the weakness of regulatory systems, European Socialist parties and their left-wing cousins have not found a compelling response, let alone taken advantage of the right's failures. "Hmmm...," the voter tells himself, "stagnation or collapse? Which shall I choose?" German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II. Germans prefer their commies without a sugar coating... Voters also punished left-leaning candidates in the summer's European Parliament elections and trounced French Socialists in 2007. Where the left holds power, as in Spain and Britain, it is under attack. Where it is out, as in France, Italy and now Germany, it is divided and listless. In power, the left is given the opportunity to prove its incompetence and urge to destruction. Out of power it merely obstructs and subverts. Some American conservatives demonize President Obama's fiscal stimulus and health care overhaul as a dangerous turn toward European-style Socialism -- but it is Europe's right, not left, that is setting its political agenda. We're usually out of sync: Reagan and Thatcher were "balanced" by Mitterand. Europe's center-right parties have embraced many ideas of the left: generous welfare benefits, nationalized health care, sharp restrictions on carbon emissions, the ceding of some sovereignty to the European Union. But they have won votes by promising to deliver more efficiently than the left, while working to lower taxes, improve financial regulation, and grapple with aging populations. This is why the CDU/CSU is slowly sinking as well, while the perennial junior partner Free Democrats are on an upswing. Being "conservative" is more than just delivering the boodle promised by the Social Dems more efficiently. It helps to stand for something yourself. Europe's conservatives, says Michel Winock, a historian at the Paris Institut d'Études Politiques, "have adapted themselves to modernity." When Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Germany's Angela Merkel condemn the excesses of the "Anglo-Saxon model" of capitalism while praising the protective power of the state, they are using Socialist ideas that have become mainstream, he said. And still missing the point of individual liberty as the foundation of capitalism. If you're free of the obligation of tugging your forelock in the presence of the aristocracy (or priesthood or your local block leader) you're free to attend to your own affairs, which include your economic life. If the state has "protective power" so also does it have the power to give and to take away. It is not that the left is irrelevant -- it often represents the only viable opposition to established governments, and so benefits, as in the United States, from the normal cycle of electoral politics. That's what I said about the pendulum swinging. In Portugal, the governing Socialists won re-election on Sunday, but lost an absolute parliamentary majority. In Spain, the Socialists still get credit for opposing both Franco and the Iraq war. In Germany, the broad left, including the Greens, has a structural majority in Parliament, but the Social Democrats, in postelection crisis, must contemplate allying with the hard left, Die Linke, which has roots in the old East German Communist Party. The Second International allying with the Third International. Tut tut. What would Lenin say? Part of the problem is the "wall in the head" between East and West Germans. While the Christian Democrats moved smoothly eastward, the Social Democrats of the West never joined with the Communists. "The two Germanys, one Socialist, one Communist -- two souls -- never really merged," said Giovanni Sartori, a professor emeritus at Columbia University. "It explains why the S.P.D., which was always the major Socialist party in Europe, cannot really coalesce." Having seen first-hand the drabness of the DDR, and having watched -- if only from a distance -- the events as the wall finally came down, I can't understand the Germans' apparent longing for it. But I've never had to defer to a block leader, either. The situation in France is even worse for the left. Asked this summer if the party was dying, Bernard-Henri Lévy, an emblematic Socialist, answered: "No -- it is already dead. No one, or nearly no one, dares to say it. But everyone, or nearly everyone, knows it." While he was accused of exaggerating, given that the party is the largest in opposition and remains popular in local government, his words struck home. I'm not sure if it's actually dead. La Belle France has a liking for illogical politix. I think it's an outgrowth of their liking for counterintuitive philosophers. The Socialist Party, with a long revolutionary tradition and weakening ties to a diminishing working class, is riven by personal rivalries. The party last won the presidency in 1988, and in 2007, Ségolène Royal lost the presidency to Mr. Sarkozy by 6.1 percent, a large margin. She was something of a loup-loup, but I think Monsieur Jacque Crapaud simply had more affection for Sarkozy, whom one suspects has testicles. With a reputation for flakiness, Ms. Royal narrowly lost the party leadership election last year to a more doctrinaire Socialist, Martine Aubry, by 102 votes out of 135,000. The ensuing allegations of fraud further chilled their relations. While Ms. Royal would like to move the Socialists to the center and explore a more formal coalition with the Greens and the Democratic Movement of François Bayrou, Ms. Aubry fears diluting the party. She is both famous and infamous for achieving the 35-hour workweek in the last Socialist government. Which contributed to le competitivenesse Francais precisely how? The French Socialist Party "is trapped in a hopeless contradiction," said Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute at New York University. It espouses a radical platform it cannot deliver; the result leaves space for parties to its left that can take as much as 15 percent of the vote. I think it -- and the other parties of the left -- share much with B.O.'s world view, which is divorced from the perception of finite bounds to the things we'd like to do. If the world doesn't fit, it can't be forced to fit, no matter how much you demonstrate. The party, at its summer retreat last month at La Rochelle, a coastal resort, still talked of "comrades" and "party militants." Its seminars included "Internationalism at Globalized Capitalism's Hour of Crisis." But its infighting has drawn ridicule. Mr. Sarkozy told his party this month that he sent "a big thank-you" to Ms. Royal, "who is helping me a lot," and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a prominent European Green politician, said "everyone has cheated" in the Socialist Party and accused Ms. Royal of acting like "an outraged young girl." The internecine squabbling in France and elsewhere has done little to position Socialist parties to answer the question of the moment: how to preserve the welfare state amid slower growth and rising deficits. The Socialists have, in this contest, become conservatives, fighting to preserve systems that voters think need to be improved, though not abandoned. "The Socialists can't adapt to the loss of their basic electorate, and with globalism, the welfare state can no longer exist in the same way," Professor Sartori said. Enrico Letta, 43, is one of the hopes of Italy's left, currently in disarray in the face of Silvio Berlusconi's nationalist populism. "We have to understand that Socialism is an answer of the last century," Mr. Letta said. "We need to build a center-left that is pragmatic, that provides an attractive alternative, and not just an opposition." They always say that when they're out of power. They get back in power and they consider it a mandate for the doctrinaire. Mr. Letta argues that Socialist policies will have to be transmuted into a more fluid form to allow an alliance with center, liberal and green parties that won't be called "Socialist." "Watermelon" is the term I think is currently favored: Green on the outside, red on the inside, with specks of black to accommodate the anarchists. Mr. Winock, the historian, said, "I think the left and Socialism in Europe still have work to do; they have a raison d'être, and they will have to rely more on environment issues." Combined with continuing efforts to reduce income disparity, he said, "going green" may give the left more life. ... by concealing its meat within that green shell... Mr. Judt argues that European Socialists need a new message -- how to reform capitalism, "recognizing the centrality of economic interest while displacing it from its throne as the only way of talking about politics." European Socialists need "to think a lot harder about what the state can and can't do in the 21st century," he said. Not an easy syllabus. But without that kind of reform, Mr. Judt said, "I don't think Socialism in Europe has a future; and given that it is a core constitutive part of the European democratic consensus, that's bad news."

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Europe

Thousands rally in Paris over immigration

2006-07-04

Thousands of people marched through Paris on Saturday to protest plans to tighten restrictions on immigration and step up deportations of immigrant families with children who are in the country illegally. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's new immigration law, which passed in parliament Friday, makes it harder to gain residency permits and ends the practice of automatically granting papers to illegal immigrants who can prove they have lived in France for 10 years. Sarkozy also has vowed to send home at least 25,000 illegals this year, up from about 20,000 in 2005. Many leaders of the Socialist opposition attended Saturday's march, including former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and former Labor Minister Martine Aubry. Polls suggest illegal immigration is a top concern ahead of next year's presidential elections, with many in France fearing that immigrants poach jobs, soak up rich state welfare payments and commit crimes. In October, Sarkozy temporarily suspended plans to deport thousands of school-age illegal immigrants and their families until the end of the academic year on July 4. With that date fast approaching, some activists say they are ready to hide families from police.

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Europe

French outrage at ’old Europe’ remarks

2003-01-23

French leaders have reacted angrily after US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described France and Germany as the "old Europe", marking a deepening rift over policy on Iraq. Finance Minister Francis Mer said he was "profoundly vexed" by Mr Rumsfeld's remarks, while former Employment Minister Martine Aubry described the US as arrogant. Mr Rumsfeld made the remarks in Washington after French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed to work together to oppose US threats of war in Iraq.He told foreign journalists that France and Germany were not representative of modern Europe. "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't," he said. "I think that's old Europe." Bitch slapped them! He pointed to the planned expansion of Nato, with seven eastern European and Baltic countries invited to join the alliance. "If you look at the entire Nato Europe today, the centre of gravity is shifting to the east," Mr Rumsfeld said. And they remember who their friends are. The BBC's James Coomarasamy, in Paris, says the divisions between Europe and the US over Iraq are growing more public and the rhetoric more pointed by the day. The French Environment Minister, Roselyne Bachelot, told one interviewer: "If you knew what I felt like telling Mr Rumsfeld..." She then stopped herself, saying the word was too offensive. Rummy would gut her and nail her hide to his office wall without breaking sweat Europe is deeply divided over the possibility of war with Iraq. France and Germany are opposed to early military action, while the UK is sending massive troop deployments to the Gulf. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has questioned the commitment of France and Germany to disarming Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. However, he has described the disagreements with France as a "blip", saying he hoped "the French would come to the understanding" of the need to use the threat of force to compel Saddam Hussein to disarm. Bye, bye, France! Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

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