Sarkozy gives his last speech before Wednesday's big debate....

Sarkozy accuses unions of failing workers in mass rally

By News Wires (text)In a May Day address to an estimated 200,000 people in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on Tuesday, presidential incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy called on French unions to "serve France", and accused them of failing workers.

AFP - Nicolas Sarkozy staged a huge election rally on Tuesday to rival France's traditional May Day show of force by the left, as Marine Le Pen scornfully rejected his bid to woo her far-right supporters.
Five days before Sarkozy was to face Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande in the second-round run-off of the French presidential election, he addressed a cheering crowd in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower at Trocadero.


His campaign claimed 200,000 had turned out in bright spring sunshine to hear him attempt to don the nationalist mantle of General Charles de Gaulle and, while this figure was impossible to verify, the crowd was packed tight.

SARKOZY TO UNIONS: 'DO NOT BETRAY YOUR MISSION'

At the same moment, the French left and trade union movements, which are backing Hollande, were marching through Left Bank Paris towards another huge rally at the revolutionary venue of the Place de la Bastille.
"I say this to the unions. Put down the red flag and serve France!" the right-wing incumbent declared, as supporters waved France's tricolour banner.
Having spent the week since the first-round vote attempting to recruit far-right sympathisers from Le Pen's anti-immigrant, anti-EU camp, Sarkozy rounded on the left, accusing the unions of failing ordinary workers.
He tried to silence critics of his bid to hijack what is traditionally a labour festival by recalling that De Gaulle had often addressed France on May Day, and urged France to turn its back on Socialism.
"We have decided to gather under the Tricolour. I will never accept being lectured to by those who brandish the red flag, symbol of so many tyrannies," he said, while four kilometres (just over two miles) away the unions marched.
Promising a "new French model" based on hard work and entrepreneurship, he vowed to abolish collective bargaining and build an economy where "success will no longer be regarded with suspicion but as an example".

The crowd chanted "We're going to win! We're going to win!", but if Sarkozy does pull it off it will be despite stagnant growth, high unemployment and his having trailed Hollande in opinion polls for more than six months.
The latest polls forecast that Hollande will win by around 54 percent to Sarkozy's 46, and his campaign is coasting towards Wednesday's televised debate and Sunday's election showdown with quiet confidence.
Campaigning outside Paris, Hollande said he would seek to be a successor to France's last Socialist president Francois Mitterrand and accused Sarkozy of trying to divide France with his attacks on trade unions.
"When there are four million unemployed, when joblessness has increased by more than a million, who defends the value of work and who is ruining it?" he asked, hailing unions and promising growth and a higher minimum wage.

FRANCE 2012: THE ELECTION BLOG ON THE BLOGS Socialists don’t know 'real work': Sarkozy’s desperate Mayday call

Sarkozy's best hope of turning around the polls would be to recruit most of Le Pen's voters from the first round, when she won a record 18 percent on a ticket of protectionism, leaving the European Union and closing the borders.
But Le Pen, hopeful that a Sarkozy loss would shatter the right and help the National Front make gains in June's legislative elections, scorned his overture in the third big rally of the day in Paris.
"Who between Francois Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy will impose the austerity plan in the most servile way? Who will submit the best to the instructions of the IMF, the ECB or the European Commission?" she asked ironically.

"On May 6 it's not a president who is to be elected, but a simple employee of the European Central Bank, a Brussels sub-controller of finance, charged with applying the Commission's decisions without question," she said.
"And, forgive me, with regular reports to Angela Merkel's Germany," she added, as the crowd booed.
Le Pen reminded her supporters that they are free to vote as they choose on Sunday, but said that she would cast a blank ballot so as not to endorse either candidate and strongly suggested that they should do the same.

THE SARKOZY RALLY IN PICTURES

and....

Tue, 05/01/2012 - 18:32

Socialists don’t know 'real work': Sarkozy’s desperate Mayday call

While the rest of Europe prances around a maypole or reaches for the Alka-Seltzer, the good people of France spend their national holiday and day off work celebrating, er, work. It’s a historic pastime for the continent’s most passionate strikers – May 1st represents the day they gained the right to paid holiday (way back in 1936) – andhas been described as a “religious feast” for the country’s almighty trade unions. Indeed. It’s like Christmas for lefties.

So what on earth was stalwart conservative and master of bling-bling, Nicolas Sarkozy, doing gatecrashing the party with his own rally on their sacred day?

If you ask the president himself (which is precisely what astounded French journalists did last week), he’ll tell you that his May Day party is not merely celebrating work, but real work. With a smirk that would have his former spin-doctors turning in their graves (all having died of heart attacks, naturally), Sarkozy proudly told reporters that his party would celebrate not just work, but “real work” and “people who workhard”. Unlike all those leftist bastards who drive around in Porsches and go yachting in Saint Tropez, right? Oh no wait, that’s Sarkozy himself, doh! He must be talking about the endless stream of illegal immigrants who are eating that secret stash of gold-coated truffles in the Louvre basement.

Anyway... What ensued was a battle of work parties in the capital. While trade unionists and leftwingers amassed to celebrate work on one side of the city, Sarkozy groupies joined hands to celebrate realwork on the other. Even far-right leader Marine Le Pen joined in the contest with her own gathering (although her National Front party, popular among the working class, always holds a May Day rally). We were half-expecting her to call it “The really real work party”.

Mayday! Mayday! Sarkozy is going under

While Sarkozy’s May Day appearance was deemed a most terrible indignity among France’s leftwing population, it wasn’t entirely unjustified. Yapping at the heels of Socialist candidate François Hollande since day one of the election campaign, Sarkozy has never quite managed to get ahead of the bespectacled frontrunner. His only hope now is of winning over a few (well, a million), last minute voters. So a whole day devoted entirely to celebrating leftwing values, justfour days before the election? You can see his point.

Hollande, on the other hand, was able to enjoy the day off with his comrades, resting his voice before Wednesday’s big debate with the pesky ankle-snapper in question. In a smug poke in Sarkozy’s direction, Hollande told reporters that of course he would not be working on May Day. The whole point of having the day off is to celebrate workers’ rights. Going to work – i.e.: giving a speech – would be a sign of disrespect to the country’s workforce (take that, Sarko!).

An excellent excuse, François, and no doubt a point of view shared by most French workers, but you have all but forgotten Mr Sarkozy’s new slogan. You are clearly a lazy good-for-nothing benefit-scrounging skiver, who is not at work simply because you do not know the value of real work.

Better be ready for the debate tomorrow. That is, if you don’t call in sick!

If you want to follow tomorrow’s televised debate between Sarkozy and Hollande, log onto the France24.com homepage at 9pm Paris time and check into our live blog for minute-by-minute updates in English.