It's Royal-Sarkozy In The May 6 Duel For France's Presidency
April 24, 2007

By Axel Krause

In one of the largest voter turnouts in France’s postwar history, rejecting extremes, but supporting economic and social change, nearly 85% of 44.5 million registered voters, decided April 22 that they wanted a clear, classical left-right choice in the final round of the presidential election.

And that choice, to be fought heatedly until French voters return to the polls May 6 - involving two competing visions of the future – is between the chic, 53-year-old, unmarried mother of four and former Socialist minister Ségolène Royal, and the continuing front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy, 52, a tough, staunch, pro-Bush conservative, who also has held top cabinet jobs. Sunday night, amid cheering supporters, Sarkozy  pledged to rally the French people around what he termed “a new French dream.”

Addressing her cheering supporters – likewise smiling, radiating determination and confidence – Royal promised to “hold the hand of all those around me who believe that that it is not only possible but urgent to leave behind a system that no longer works.” She was referring to the ending of 12-year rule of Sarkozy’s neo-Gaullist party, the UMP, (Union for a Popular Movement) founded by President Jacques Chirac who decided not to seek a third, five-year term.

According to the latest, official results from the Interior Ministry, Sarkozy scored 31.1%, Royal 25.8%; Francois Bayrou, the centrist, “third providential man” in the race and who is expected to play a crucial role in the May 6 vote and then in the important, June 10-17 legislative elections, came up with 18.5% of the ballots cast.

This was nearly triple his score in the previous, presidential election in 2002, which marked his ascendancy as leader of the centrist, UDF party, (Union for French Democracy) founded by former president Valery Giscard  D’Estaing, who supports Sarkozy. Following the vote Sunday, his aides have repeatedly stated that he has not said, nor apparently decided, whether he will ask his supporters to vote for Royal or Sarkozy, or make up their own minds, in what could be a deciding factor May 6. Whatever he recommends, Bayrou is convinced he will be playing a greater, pivotal role in French politics from now on.

Given that he attracted a record 6.8 million votes and amid proposals to join the UMP and the Socialists in an alliance and even a future cabinet post, he announced at a news conference Wednesday that he was ruling out endorsing either candidate, and was letting his supporters make up their own minds. And he announced he was forming a new, centrist "democrat" party that would field candidates in the approaching legislative elections in order to represent "the French who want a new, independent" approach to national politics.

The idea is to build on the current base of the UDF, comprising just under thirty deputies in the outgoing, 577-seat National Assembly and that would remain independent of the UMP and Socialists, even thouh Bayrou and his followers have voted with the ruling UMP on most major issues during the past several years.

Asked if he would accept the post of prime minister or some other key cabinet post in a future government, he replied that in the current context this was impossible, having rejected to opt for either Royal or Sarkozy, and disclosing he himself had not yet decided how he will vote on May 6.

Meantime, contrary to earlier polling, and his own, optimistic projections, the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen, 78,  scored a modest 10.5%, about one million fewer votes than in the 2002 presidential election, as many conservatives supported Sarkozy’s pledges for tough, law-and-order policies, along with crackdowns on immigration. These are causes Le Pen’s National Front party have championed for many years.

The other, eight candidates in the first-round voting, representing ultra-left, other far-right, as well as rural and environmental interests, scored between 4.1% and 0.3%, not anywhere near a majority. Thus, they, too were eliminated, leaving the two front-runners for what the leftist-leaning daily newspaper, Libération,  Monday headlined “Le Combat Royal” and the conservative Le Figaro a “Duel au sommet.”

Summing up much opinion inside and outside France, Phil Gordon, a European specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told Le Figaro that “for twenty years, we here have assumed that France cannot go on as it has, with 10% unemployment” and now, it seems, Gordon asked, is there a possibility that France can and will change? Yes, of course, many observers will agree,  but the crucial questions are how, and in what directions? And where does foreign policy fit in? And specifically, trans-Atlantic relations, virtually ignored in the campaigning until now, aside from vaguely- defined ideas and proposals.

Sarkozy admiringly supports the Bush administration, disagreeing over the Iraq war and Turkish membership in the European Union, which he opposes and Bush supports; Royal is strongly anti-Bush, critical of American society and open to Turkey someday entering the EU. Both affirm the need for stronger trans-Atlantic ties and cooperation, but on mutually-agreeable terms that have not yet surfaced in the campaigning.

Both candidates also have said that one of their first steps as president will be to visit Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss how to relaunch EU construction following the rejection by France and The Netherlands in 2005 of a proposed constitution, amid deep cleavages in the Socialist and UMP ranks regarding the future of the EU and such specifics as broadening the mandate of the European Central Bank. And including a “European social dimension” in the proposed constitutional revisions, which has already raised objections among some key EU members, such as the United Kingdom. 

Light may at last be shed on foreign policy in a much-awaited, face-to-face confrontation of their ideas and personalities, currently scheduled for the evening of Wednesday May 2, taking the form of a U.S.-style presidential debate at the nation’s leading television station, TF1. How they perform may well change many minds, but the current prognosis is that both candidates will stick to domestic economic and social issues, trying hard, above all, to convince voters they have what it takes to occupy and lead the nation from the Elysée Palace, and hopefully, with a legislative majority in the National Assembly.

(Profiles of Royal, Sarkozy and Bayrou can be found elsewhere on this web site.)

In a sense responding to the question raised by Brookings’ Gordon, Le Monde in a front-page editorial Monday, concluded: “avoiding the most-demagogic paths, in pursuing the candidate of ‘rupture’ (Sarkozy) and of ‘change’ (Royal) the French have declared themselves ready to move.”

Major polling organizations continue predicting that Sarkozy will win handily, with some 54% of the vote versus, compared to around 46% for Royal. And that projected ranking,  political strategists remind Transatlantic,  is roughly where former Socialist President Mitterrand stood just before the final vote in the May 1981 presidential election, which the outgoing, heavily-favored UDF President Giscard D'Estaing lost.

Axel Krause, Paris-based contributing editor of Transatlantic, believes the campaign now moving into its decisive phase could contain many surprises, such as shifting alliances, closer insights into the candidates’ personalities and harder-hitting, even below-the-belt campaigning, including an acceleration of smear tactics. The campaign, as it winds down, he adds, may also provide some idea of who might be France’s next prime minister and occupy key cabinet posts in foreign affairs, finance and defense.