The big four: (r-l) Bayrou, Royal, Sarkozy and Le Pen
Next Sunday (22nd April 2007) marks the first round of the French presidential elections. With a single candidate unlikely to obtain the majority in the first round, a second round is expected to be needed. Throughout the campaigning right-wing candidate Sarkozy and left-wing candidate Ségolène Royal have led the way in nearly all surveys of intentions to vote, with Sarkozy always ahead of Royal.
However, in recent months, centralist candidate François Bayrou has emerged as a potential spanner in the works, as has the extreme-right Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. Who will the French public elect as their next president for the next five years?
Shefbase’s man in France Andrew Burgess takes a look at the main candidates:
François Bayrou (Union for French Democracy [UDF])
Mr Bayrou, 55, has long sought to break the traditional mould of French politics. Although his political roots are with the centre-right, he has refused to join the governing UMP bloc and has opposed it on numerous important issues and sided with the opposition in a no-confidence vote.
The son of a farmer, he did not attend an elite school but instead studied literature and worked as a teacher while continuing to help his mother on the farm. After entering into the political world in the early 1980s and rising through the ranks of the UDF, he served as education minister in centre-right governments between 1993 and 1997, before becoming the parties’ leader.
Mr Bayrou is still a part-time farmer and is arguably the only French presidential candidate who can milk cows and drive a tractor…
His programme is designed to appeal to voters all across the political spectrum, focusing on what he calls the “six Es” - employment, the environment, education, the economy, exclusion and Europe.
Established politicians have dismissed Mr Bayrou’s refusal to choose a clear label as a disingenuous gimmick. But having recently been awarded 17% in a recent survey of intentions to vote in the first round, it would appear that Bayrou is claiming votes from both sides. And though the same polls indicate that Mr Bayrou could defeat the current frontrunners in the second round, getting there is another matter; this would mean beating either Mr Sarkozy or Ms Royal in the first round, which at this stage looks to be a tall order.
But French voters are known for their unpredictability and so there still remains hope for the dark horses aka Mr Bayrou.
Ségolène Royal (Socialist Party [PS])
Could France, for the first time in its history have a female president? Thanks to Ms Royal, that possibility could become a reality.
The 53-year old, Senegalese born, mother of four, won the right to represent her party, defeating her husband François Hollande in the process, after enduring much sniping from male politicians within her own party. For example, Laurent Fabius, who ran against her for the parties’ candidature, publicly asked who would look after Ms Royal and Mr Hollande’s four children if she went for the presidency.
However, her campaign has faltered on many an occasion and she has remained in second place in the polls behind the more experienced Sarkozy. She has served as minister for the environment from 1992-93, and then as junior minister for education (1997-2000) and junior minister for family and childhood (2000-01). Whereas, Sarkozy on the other hand, has two terms as interior minister under his belt (a position generally regarded as one of the toughest postings in government), as well as a spell as finance minister.
Her manifesto, Desirs d’avenir (Future Desires) which offers voters “100 ideas for restoring a shared ambition, pride and fraternity to France”, suffered a blow soon after its launch when one of her economic advisers, Eric Besson, resigned in a row over its financial cost.
In addition to this, a series of self-inflicted wounds ranging from internal party wrangles over policy to diplomatic gaffes has meant that she risks not being perceived as a serious candidate. For example, she appeared to be unfazed during a Hezbollah MP’s tirade against Israel and the US during a visit to Lebanon, voiced an apparent sympathy for the independence of Quebec, and was unable to correctly recall the number of nuclear submarines possessed by the French Army.
Nicolas Sarkozy (Union for the Movement of France [UMP])
Since winning the ballot on 14th January of the the ruling centre-right UMP nomination to succeed President Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy, the former Interior Minister and Finance Minister has been ahead in the polls and is widely expected to reach the second round on 6th May. Nicolas Sarkozy has labelled himself as a moderniser, but has sharply divided public opinion throughout his time in office - not least by adopting a tough stance on immigration. (Ironically, he is the son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother of Greek Jewish origin.) For many French citizens, he remains at fault for the riots of 2005, which escalated after he famously described young delinquents in the Paris suburbs as racaille (a rabble).
During his time as Interior Minister, Mr Sarkozy, 51, pushed through many measures to curb illegal immigration and to integrate skilled migrants into French society. According to his other biographer, Nicolas Domenach, one of his main political influences is not French but British: “He admires Tony Blair hugely - for many reasons,” he says. “Tony Blair was able to seduce the media, in the way Sarkozy does. And Sarkozy looks at how Tony Blair was able to sell his political ideology.”
However, it appears that his straight talking is winning the French public over.
“He’s hyperactive, he’s ambitious, he’s a heavy worker, a workaholic, he never rests,” says Anita Hausser, who has written a biography of Mr Sarkozy and is the current political editor at the French broadcaster LCI. “He was a lawyer, so he seems close to the people, and he wants to show them that he understands their problems and that he will solve their problems.”
Despite falling out with Chirac in 1995, in March of this year the current President gave his support to the candidature of Sarkozy, which was viewed at the time as confirmation the future victory of the UMP leader.
Jean-Marie Le Pen (National Front [FN])
The controversial leader, born in 1928, joined the Foreign Legion in 1954 and saw action in Indochina and Algeria, before beginning a political career began in 1956 and founding the National Front (FN) in 1972.
With his famous slogan “France for the French”, immigration has always been his hot-topic and with his warnings to the electorate that North African immigration was threatening French life, he managed to increase his share of the presidential vote up from 0.74% in 1974 to 14% in 1988, 15% in 1995 and 18% in 2002.
In was in that year of 2002 that he shocked the whole country when he made it to the second round of the presidential election, knocking out the-then socialist Premier Minister Lionel Jospin. Such was the shock of the possibility of Le Pen becoming president, Jacques Chirac was re-elected president with 82.2% of the vote.
It is safe to say that Le Pen is very rarely far away from controversy. In 1987, he once described the Holocaust as a “detail of history”, and later fell foul of the law for an election punch-up with a socialist rival - which almost cost him his seat in the European parliament. Amongst his policies is the scrapping of the Euro, the total end to immigration and the deregulation of the economy while slapping heavy taxes on imports.
After appearing to take a softer line on race relations, he told Le Monde newspaper just weeks before the first round that not all races were equal. “An old person is not equal to a young person, a person with one leg is not a star dancer,” he said. “You can’t dispute the inequality of the races, which I have shown when I say that it is obvious that blacks are much better than whites at running but whites are better at swimming.”
For more information about each candidate, you can watch a clip of each candidate in his or her official TV campaign slot by visiting this link: http://www.abenergy.f2s.com/andrew/blog/2007/04/meet-candidates.html (please note that all clips are spoken in French and are subtitled in French).
