By John Thornhill
Published: April 15 2005 21:17 | Last updated: April 15 2005 21:17
Jacques Chirac outgunned Clint Eastwood on Thursday night, but only just.
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The French president's much-hyped intervention in the European constitutional debate attracted 7.4m television viewers, while the Hollywood star drew 6.4m for his film, Pale Rider, on a rival channel.
But if the two lead actors' styles varied, their promised plotlines seemed similar: “A small town is terrorised by a gangster and salvation comes in the form of a gun-toting preacher.”
Seeking to reassure his live audience of anxious young voters, Mr Chirac insisted: “Don't be afraid.”
The constitutional treaty, he intoned, was something to be embraced rather than feared: it would help Europe be more cohesive and better organised to meet the challenges of tomorrow. The national referendum on Europe's constitutional treaty on May 29 was an opportunity to reaffirm France's social values and political interests in Europe and beyond, he said.
But Mr Chirac and the Yes campaigners will have a tough struggle to reverse the latest polling trends. The No camp has been in the lead in the last 15 opinion polls, and infighting among Mr Chirac's own hired guns threatens to undermine his efforts.
One telling political sign, perhaps, is that some of Mr Chirac's political rivals and supporters already appear to be positioning themselves for the fallout from a No vote. Nicolas Sarkozy, president of Mr Chirac's ruling UMP party and potential rival to Mr Chirac for the presidency in 2007, has been taking an increasingly independent line in campaigning for the treaty, criticising France's failed “social model”.
Dominique de Villepin, the interior minister and a Chirac loyalist, also appears to be pushing hard to succeed the luckless Jean-Pierre Raffarin as prime minister after the referendum.
Mr Chirac fired some shots at his opponents, warning his audience about the consequences of voting No and conjuring up some fears of his own. Without a strong Europe, he said, France would be vulnerable to the “ultra-liberal, Anglo-Saxon Atlanticist” currents in the world and the rising powers of China, India and South America.
In particular, he cautioned France's farmers, who are opposed to the constitutional treaty, that their lucrative subsidies from Brussels could end if they rejected the treaty and became Europe's “black sheep”.
“If France were to vote No, the other countries would have only one idee fixe: to suppress the common agricultural policy, which principally benefits France.” There had been a lot of fuss in the French media about how the audience of 83 young voters had been vetted to exclude the most radical views. Even so, some of the questions from presenters and the audience were brusque.
While Mr Chirac focused on the grand sweep of Europe's development, the young voters wanted practical answers to immediate concerns: education grants, public services and jobs. Some said they could not see what difference the convoluted constitution would make to their daily lives.
Mr Chirac's performance won mixed reviews. Laurent Fabius, the former prime minister and leading critic of the treaty, said: “I found Mr Chirac, like the constitution, long and not very convincing.”
Some media commentators argued that the 72-year-old French president, veteran of many a difficult election campaign, had tried to pull his increasingly tired trick of seducing the left while reassuring the right.
An editorial in today's Le Monde newspaper said the president could have done better. He could have been more convincing in selling Europe's virtues, it said, but he was hindered by being only a “lukewarm European, poorly hiding his lack of European faith”.
Nevertheless, some Yes campaigners took heart from Mr Chirac's performance, saying it could help to reframe the debate, elevating it from the national to the European level.
Jean-Dominique Giuliani, president of the Robert Schuman Foundation, said it was unprecedented for a French president, who has almost monarchical status, to subject himself to such indignity at the hands of the electorate. “The French nomenklatura does not like this kind of exercise and the French people will have been sensitive to this special effort,” he said. “I am sure that it will count.”
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/67c799b4-adea-11d9-9c30-00000e2511c8.html
