http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/04/paris-city-of-dimmed-lights.html
None of the candidates is about reform, none of them runs a platform for change similar to the one Thatcher promoted in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. No, Hollande wants to be a new Mitterand, Sarkozy wants to be the President he promised but failed to be since 2007 and Le Pen is simply against everything. Change? Pas du tout! [Not at all! - Mish]
Hollande leads Sarkozy by 10-12 percent in the expected head to head duel on May 6th - but two weeks in politics can be like a decade in real time. There is plenty of ground yet to be covered and mistakes to be made.
The consensus among the French economists I have talked is that things will get worse in the aftermath of the election - whoever wins needs to do the “Greece/Spain thing”: Own up to the real size of the problem. France has sinned on deficits and spending like no other EU nation in the last three years and now it is France’s turn to make real sacrifices.
The ideal platform for any new President would be to use the first 100 days to create a credible ten-year plan that is created with all the relevant parties at the bargaining table: the unions, the private and public sectors and the banks.
Friday, April 20, 2012 6:51 PM
Paris – City of Dimmed Lights?
Steen Jakobsen, chief economist for Saxo Bank in Denmark pinged me with an email this morning called "Paris – City of Dimmed Lights?"
I asked for my taxi driver’s political opinions on my trip to Paris, and he practically shouts back: “Promissez, promissezz – eet’s all just promissez”.
He clearly doesn’t trust anyone - Sarkozy? “Everybody hates him.” Hollande? “He want to take everything away from everybody” Le Pen? Then he smiles “Well, she could do OK on Sunday.” Indeed she could – if France decides to use the “free option” of the first round, which is an opportunity to demonstrate their general distrust of French politicians.
Then he makes another important point: if there is one thing the French deserve a world championship for, it’s for going on strike - the French are world class at that!
That’s right, it’s presidential election time in France, with voters going to the polls this Sunday the 22nd and then having a second run-off round on May 6th - and it feels like French voters are ready to go on strike en masse. Maybe this could be another 2002 moment where someone comes from behind and disturbs the assumed two-horse race of Sarkozy and the Socialist Hollande? I’m not sure about that, but clearly the Parisians are feeling something in the air, and trust me it’s not just the spring weather.But despite the French disgust with their politicians and the spirit of protest in the air, the menu of voting options is not compelling. So whoever “wins” the presidential election will almost certainly be a loser in the fight to get France and the European Union moving in the right direction.
None of the candidates is about reform, none of them runs a platform for change similar to the one Thatcher promoted in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. No, Hollande wants to be a new Mitterand, Sarkozy wants to be the President he promised but failed to be since 2007 and Le Pen is simply against everything. Change? Pas du tout! [Not at all! - Mish]
Hollande leads Sarkozy by 10-12 percent in the expected head to head duel on May 6th - but two weeks in politics can be like a decade in real time. There is plenty of ground yet to be covered and mistakes to be made.
The consensus among the French economists I have talked is that things will get worse in the aftermath of the election - whoever wins needs to do the “Greece/Spain thing”: Own up to the real size of the problem. France has sinned on deficits and spending like no other EU nation in the last three years and now it is France’s turn to make real sacrifices.
The ideal platform for any new President would be to use the first 100 days to create a credible ten-year plan that is created with all the relevant parties at the bargaining table: the unions, the private and public sectors and the banks.
France, like most of Europe, has become uncompetitive and needs to do a long-term 'internal devaluation' - this plan does not need to provide miracles and short-term massive gains, but it needs to be simple, broadly backed by all stakeholders and credible. The financial market is willing to accept any slight hint of reform and willingness to discuss the real issues as a positive sign of integrity and good intentions, but as we have gotten used to in the elections around Europe, the French election will be an exercise in protest rather than a mandate for change.
and....
French President Nicolas Sarkozy chose the last official day of campaigning before Sunday’s first round vote to lash out at election rules - as well as issue an apology to the nation.
The incumbent president is under pressure, with most opinion polls showing him trailing behind Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande by up to three points for the first round.
At his final campaign rally in Nice on Friday evening, the president himself declared that “the moment of truth” had arrived.
“This is the moment when the people of France will tell the truth”, he told supporters.
But with less than 48 hours to go before polling stations open across France it appears the pressure is beginning to tell on the man the French call “Sarko”.
After issuing a vague threat that the election will “teach everyone a lesson” in a speech on Thursday, Sarkozy turned his ire on the rules governing the election.
Sarkozy is furious that all 10 candidates in the first round of voting had to be given equal air time by the media during the one month of official campaigning, despite the fact many will only get a tiny percentage of the vote.
Chief rivals Sarkozy and Hollande have had to share air time with fringe candidates like the extreme left’s Nathalie Arthaud and Philippe Poutou as well as the eccentric Jacques Cheminade, who wants to create a thermo-nuclear corridor from earth to Mars.
“Sarkozy getting desperate”
“I have been in a battle, where for the past four weeks it has been me alone against nine other candidates,” Sarkozy complained to the French daily Le Figaro.
Insisting the regulations must be changed in future he said: “It will be the last election with these rules because all this leads to is a caricature of our democracy. The rules reflect equality but not the reality.”
University College London’s Philippe Marliere believes Sarkozy’s anger is a sign of the President’s increasing “desperation”.
“His argument is a bit ironic considering he has been in power for five years with so much media exposure,” said the French politics professor.
“The rule is only for a month and it shows all the candidates are equal before the law. It’s like he’s a child complaining about everyone ganging up on him. It really smacks of desperation,” Marliere added. “It’s a sign of someone who knows he is on course to lose.”
Others, however, believe the election rules could benefit Sarkozy.
Others, however, believe the election rules could benefit Sarkozy.
Bernard Debré, former minister from Sarkozy’s UMP party believes the coverage given to fringe candidates will help the president.
“The fact there are such absurd candidates could actually reflect well on the president,” Debré said.
Second round is a “different story”
Despite strong showings from far right candidate Marine Le Pen and the far lefts Jean-Luc Melanchon, the president is still expected to reach the second round run-off vote on May 6.
Despite strong showings from far right candidate Marine Le Pen and the far lefts Jean-Luc Melanchon, the president is still expected to reach the second round run-off vote on May 6.
The decisive vote to choose France’s next president will be “a totally different story”, Sarkozy believes.
“I will go from having 10 percent of air time to having 50 percent and we will finally face each other, project against project, personality against personality,” he said.
Marliere believes Sarkozy must take advantage of his time on television if he is to have any chance of convincing French voters to back him in the crucial run-off vote.
“His biggest hope is the live TV debates which are held between the two rounds of voting,” said Marliere.
“They are emotionally and politically charged and there will be a chance to take on Hollande because he believes he’s a better debater,” Marliere said.
“But it would take Hollande to do or say something extremely foolish or be seen to be totally out of his depth for him to turn it around and I don’t think that will happen.”
Asking for forgiveness
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Sarkozy also showed an air of contrition on his final day of campaigning once again issuing a “mea culpa” for the “mistakes” he made following his election triumph in 2007.
He was heavily criticised in the French media in the aftermath of that victory for his perceived flashy lifestyle, which many in France thought unbecoming of a head of state.
Pictures of him holidaying on multi-million pound yachts in the Mediterranean and his whirlwind romance with supermodel Carla Bruni earned him the derisive nickname of the ‘bling-bling’ president.
After apologising at the start of this year’s election campaign, Sarkozy felt the need to remind the French public on Friday that he deeply regretted his errors.
In a contrite interview with RTL radio station he claimed to not have immediately understood “the symbolic dimension of the role of president” and accepted that he had lacked a certain amount of “somberness”.
“I will not make the same mistake again, now that I know the job,” he said.
With opinion polls showing Hollande holding as much as a 10 point lead over Sarkozy for the run-off vote, the chances of the president being able to make up for his previous mishaps appear ever slimmer.
and....
http://www.france24.com/en/20120419-france-looks-back-confront-future-with-marine-le-pen-front-national-election
With hours to go before the end of campaigning ahead of Sunday’s first round of the presidential vote, French President Nicolas Sarkozy aimed a strike at the blonde, palatably packaged leader of France’s extreme-right National Front party at a rally in the northern French town of Arras Wednesday.
"The vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen served François Mitterrand, the vote for Marine Le Pen will serve François Hollande,” Sarkozy warned before going on to somewhat unnecessarily add, “I do not want it".
Former French President Mitterrand is long dead. The National Front candidate for the 2012 race is Marine Le Pen, the 43-year-old youngest daughter of the 83-year-old party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who handed over the party’s reins to his daughter in 2011.
"The vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen served François Mitterrand, the vote for Marine Le Pen will serve François Hollande,” Sarkozy warned before going on to somewhat unnecessarily add, “I do not want it".
Former French President Mitterrand is long dead. The National Front candidate for the 2012 race is Marine Le Pen, the 43-year-old youngest daughter of the 83-year-old party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who handed over the party’s reins to his daughter in 2011.
Sarkozy’s remark at Wednesday’s rally referred to his ruling centre-right UMP party’s longstanding claim that Mitterrand, a former Socialist president, supported Le Pen senior in a bid to split France’s right-wing vote.
In 2012, this nefarious nexus, the argument goes, would ultimately benefit Sarkozy’s main rival, Socialist Party candidate François Hollande.
Dead and ageing men walking
Evoking dead and ageing men just days ahead of an election may not augur well in most countries. But France is a nation haunted by the political ghosts of the past.
As French presidential candidates use the last few hours of campaigning to tout their promises for the future of the country, many political pundits have their eyes set on a presidential election exactly a decade ago.
Thursday’s edition of the left-leaning paper, Libération, featured a full-page colour cover photo of a confident looking National Front candidate in a signature power suit with the headline, “The Threat: Marine Le Pen could create an unpleasant surprise in Sunday’s first round with a vote comparable to that of her father in 2002.”
The year 2002 is a landmark in the history of French politics, the lessons of which have dominated the political discourse for the past ten years.
It was in 2002 that then National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen edged out Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in the first round, getting16.86% of the vote to Jospin’s 16.18%.
It was also the first time in French history that a National Front candidate made it to the second round, shocking the nation with the prospect of an extreme-right president. In the second round of the 2002 race, the electorate rallied around Le Pen’s rival, UMP candidate Jacques Chirac, handing him one of the biggest landslides in the history of French politics, with over 82% of the vote.
In 2012, this nefarious nexus, the argument goes, would ultimately benefit Sarkozy’s main rival, Socialist Party candidate François Hollande.
Dead and ageing men walking
Evoking dead and ageing men just days ahead of an election may not augur well in most countries. But France is a nation haunted by the political ghosts of the past.
As French presidential candidates use the last few hours of campaigning to tout their promises for the future of the country, many political pundits have their eyes set on a presidential election exactly a decade ago.
Thursday’s edition of the left-leaning paper, Libération, featured a full-page colour cover photo of a confident looking National Front candidate in a signature power suit with the headline, “The Threat: Marine Le Pen could create an unpleasant surprise in Sunday’s first round with a vote comparable to that of her father in 2002.”
The year 2002 is a landmark in the history of French politics, the lessons of which have dominated the political discourse for the past ten years.
It was in 2002 that then National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen edged out Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin in the first round, getting16.86% of the vote to Jospin’s 16.18%.
It was also the first time in French history that a National Front candidate made it to the second round, shocking the nation with the prospect of an extreme-right president. In the second round of the 2002 race, the electorate rallied around Le Pen’s rival, UMP candidate Jacques Chirac, handing him one of the biggest landslides in the history of French politics, with over 82% of the vote.
The ‘bad memory’ of 2002
For Libération, a staunch Hollande supporter, a strong showing for Le Pen on Sunday would confirm France’s extreme-right party as a formidable force in the future of French politics.
In its editorial, Libération states that Le Pen has been hovering around the 17% mark in the opinion polls, close to the 16.86% her father won in the first round in 2002.
The paper acknowledged that Le Pen is probably unlikely to make it to the second round, but it warned that public attention has shifted from Le Pen to the surprise rise of firebrand leftist, Jean-Luc Melenchon.
A fiery speaker, Melenchon has struck a chord with many voters in recent weeks with his virulent attacks on France's elite and Sarkozy’s austerity measures. The 60-year-old former Socialist minister has seen his support rise from less than 10 percent at the start of the year to between 13 and 17 percent in recent polls.
French political pundits are now riveted by the prospect of a fight between Melenchon and Le Pen for third place in Sunday’s vote.
“Even if she does not secure the third place on Sunday, the daughter of the old National Front head will settle permanently in the French political landscape,” said the Libération editorial, which went on to blame Sarkozy for putting the far-right party on the mainstream agenda by incorporating its anti-immigration rhetoric.
Critics charge that by putting the spotlight on Le Pen and reinvigorating the spectre of April 2002, the staunchly pro-Socialist daily is seeking to rally the faithful behind Hollande at a time when many are tempted by Melenchon's more extreme brand of left-wing politics.
Le Pen herself has blasted the mainstream press for raising the spectre of 2002. Evoking the “bad memory” of 2002, when the left and right stood together against her father, Le Pen has maintained that her “hope and goal” is to make it to the second round.
For Libération, a staunch Hollande supporter, a strong showing for Le Pen on Sunday would confirm France’s extreme-right party as a formidable force in the future of French politics.
In its editorial, Libération states that Le Pen has been hovering around the 17% mark in the opinion polls, close to the 16.86% her father won in the first round in 2002.
The paper acknowledged that Le Pen is probably unlikely to make it to the second round, but it warned that public attention has shifted from Le Pen to the surprise rise of firebrand leftist, Jean-Luc Melenchon.
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French political pundits are now riveted by the prospect of a fight between Melenchon and Le Pen for third place in Sunday’s vote.
“Even if she does not secure the third place on Sunday, the daughter of the old National Front head will settle permanently in the French political landscape,” said the Libération editorial, which went on to blame Sarkozy for putting the far-right party on the mainstream agenda by incorporating its anti-immigration rhetoric.
Critics charge that by putting the spotlight on Le Pen and reinvigorating the spectre of April 2002, the staunchly pro-Socialist daily is seeking to rally the faithful behind Hollande at a time when many are tempted by Melenchon's more extreme brand of left-wing politics.
Le Pen herself has blasted the mainstream press for raising the spectre of 2002. Evoking the “bad memory” of 2002, when the left and right stood together against her father, Le Pen has maintained that her “hope and goal” is to make it to the second round.
If Libération's warning is anything to go by, that day may yet come. But with just hours to go before Sunday’s poll, all eyes in French political circles are on her battle for third.
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