Transatlantic Politics

The 5th Republic has a new leader: Nicolas Sarkozy. Voted by an overwhelming majority, during Sunday elections, Sarko is now the heading the destiny of France, with 53,06% of the total votes. And he’s about to do it the RIGHT way. Last night, during the popular rally in the Place de la Concorde, he declared: “I will grant everyone equal chance. But they should be worth having it, by working hard”. The main newspapers of the Hexagon commented thoroughly today the implications of Sarkosy’s coming to power in such a particular country as France. Jean d’Ormesson, a distinguished French writer, also member of the Académie Française, dedicated an entire page in Le Figaro, to Sarkozy’s profile:

“What is he actually doing? He reinstates the lost dignity of the right. Ever since Vichy, the right has been the living image of the unhappy conscience. It creeps in the shadows, it hides and it is ashamed of itself and of what it stands for. The brilliance is left, the good conscience is left. An icon of a Socialism that has not fathered him, but that he nevertheless represents, Mitterand has ended up in pursuing, in all impunity, right spanning policies: well, he could do it because he was a leftist. Voted by the right, Chirac was constrained to embark upon policies rather of a radical-socialist origin than Gaullist approaches. Sarkozy is explicitly on the right, in a healthy and provocative way”

Many experts and commentators have insisted on the very technical aspect of the campaign. And some, as is the case of Claude Karnoouh, in an interview he gave me yesterday, has even called this race “the race of two future prime-ministers, and not presidents”. That is because traditionally, in France, the president establishes the general framework of foreign policy and is the Commander in Chief of the French Army. Yet, both Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy have insisted on domestic issues, as the welfare system, the reforms, the economy, the work period in one week (35 hours). Sarkozy was regarded as the one who has more concrete solutions for France’s problems, while Segolene was granted the label of the supporter for distributive democracy.

As Sarkozy addressed the crowds last night, he was surrounded by his antourage, by his family. One of them is particularly important. It’s François Fillon, Sarkozy’s main political advisor who is highly regarded as de Villepin’s successor at Matignon Palace, as future prime minister of France. Quoted by Le Figaro today, while he answered a question for the French TV channel TF1, he declared that the future government “will personify the openness”.After 10 days of relaxation in the Greek Islands, Sarkosy will be sworn in on the 16th of May. Legislative elections wil take place on the 10th and on the 17th of June, and UMP is expected to take the lead, followed closely by PS and the UFD, on the third position (as showed by today’s Le Figaro estimates). Le Parisien notes that in New York Sarkozy already has been nicknamed “The American” (page 13, printed edition). George W. Bush and Angela Merkel passed their greetings last night to the newly elected French President.

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53% - Nicolas Sarkozy

47% - Segolene Royal

The exit polls are clear: France's new president is the center-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy. Good news for the economy, immigration policies and France-US relations. Bad news for Turkey, as Sarkozy is a fierce opponent to its future EU membership. He might soften his stance though, especially since Turkey is not due to join before 2014 anyway.

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According to an FT-poll , the Brits, Germans, Italians and Spaniards are even more Socialist than the French - or maybe they just wish them "well."  All of these groups support Mrs. Segolene Royal from Socialist Party over the current front-runner from the center-right, Nicolas Sarkozy:

Sixteen per cent of respondents in Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK considered that Ms Royal would be the best president for France, with 7 per cent opting for Nicolas Sarkozy, the contender from the centre-right UMP party.

Ms Royal proved most popular in Spain and Italy, which have left-wing governments. Ms Royal has made a point of courting the support of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s socialist prime minister, who is to attend her final campaign rally in Toulouse on Thursday. The first round of voting will be held on Sunday.

Separately, 22 per cent of French respondents in the poll considered Ms Royal to be the best president just behind Mr Sarkozy, with 23 per cent.

 Let's see where the two stand on the issues:

Segolene Royal - "We need justice and order"

• boost minimum wage to 1500 Euro a month, a 19.6% increase, but promising not to raise taxes…
• abolish the new flexible job contract for small firms
• create 500,000 subsidised jobs for young graduates
• pay the entire salary and social charges for unskilled young people to work for a year in small businesses
• big increase in spending on universities, research and innovation
• the construction of 120,000 social housing units a year

 Nicolas Sarkozy - "Get France back to work" (not a bad idea at all)

• exempt time worked over 35 hours a week from social charges and income tax
• give universities more autonomy, letting them compete to recruit staff and students
• break the big five unions' statutory stranglehold on representation in companies
• introduce a law that will guarantee “minimum service” on public transport during strikes
• reform the special pension regimes for railway drivers and other state employees that enable them to retire early on full pension.

According to The Economist, Sarkozy seems to be the only chance of reform France has left:

Mr Sarkozy is the only candidate who seems both to have understood the urgency of reform and to have the abrasiveness to stand a chance of carrying it out. A political outsider, who fought his way to the top of the Gaullist party through hard work and cunning, he remains fearless in the face of opposition. Anticipating resistance, his advisers are already working on a draft of the law on minimum service, so as to curb the effectiveness of strikes.

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French Interior Minister and presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy defended “Charlie Hebdo”, a French weekly sued for publishing the (in)famous Mohammad cartoons. “I prefer too many caricatures to an absence of caricature” said Sarkozy in a letter read out by “Charlie Hebdo’s” lawyer in the Paris court where the case is being heard.

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Hmm…remember France? and all the jokes about their consistency and courage during wartime? This is not a joke. This is for real.

Speaking to the New York Times, IHT and Nouvel Observateur journalists, monsieur Chirac said this: “Having one [atomic bomb], maybe a second one a little later, well, that’s not very dangerous. Where will [Iran] drop it, this bomb? On Israel? It would not have gone 200 meters into the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed to the ground.” His aides quickly realized their man had committed the gaffe of saying what everyone thought he really believed, and so left out those passages from an official interview transcript. The journalists also got a return call from the president on Tuesday, in which he noted that “I should have paid better attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record.”

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2007, page A18.

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