ELECTORAL MAP OF FRANCE
Posted on 04/28/2007 4:47:40 AM PDT by Cincinna
Socialist Segolene Royal held a courteous and lively televised debate on Saturday with defeated centrist Francois Bayrou to try to win the votes she needs to become France's next president.
Royal sought to show she has much in common with Bayrou and send a message to the 6.8 million voters who backed him in the first round that they should now vote for her in the May 6 runoff against frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy.
The Socialist contender appeared relaxed and smiling as she arrived at a Paris hotel for the debate, shaking hands with Bayrou and posing for the cameras before sitting at a table next to the centrist.
"It seemed to me very important and in the interest of France that we be able to decide on which themes we could work together," Royal said in her opening remarks.
"We will not be in agreement on everything," she added, but stressed the importance of "breaking out of confrontation".
Bayrou also said he would not rally behind her as a result of the debate but stressed the importance of reaching out to a broad electorate.
The tone of the almost two-hour debate was polite and calm, punctuated with moments of light humour.
Bayrou asserted that he was in "profound disagreement" with the Socialist on her economic proposals which he argued relied too heavily on state intervention.
"To allow people to dream on that the state will do everything for them, that's over," Bayrou said during the debate broadcast on the small BFM-TV television station and on RMC radio.
"The presidential pact is not a statist pact," Royal answered, adding that her reform pacakge would be carried out "as partnerships" with unions, civil society, political parties and other players.
Campaigning in the northern French town of Valenciennes, Sarkozy dismissed the Royal-Bayrou debate as "small-time scheming" and said it held little interest for him.
"They are together in a major Paris hotel, but I am here in Valenciennes with Jean-Louis Borloo on the ground," said Sarkozy who was accompanied by Borloo, the employment minister.
Royal, a former adviser to president Francois Mitterrand, has faced criticism within her Socialist Party for reaching out to Bayrou and engineering a shift to the centre that could leave a lasting imprint on the party's future.
The televised meeting between Bayrou and Royal has also allowed the defeated candidate to carve out a role as a player in the second round of voting that has usually been a straight two-way fight.
A former education minister, Bayrou has refused to endorse either candidate after waging an energetic campaign that rejected the left-right divide.
He won nearly 19 percent of the vote in the April 22 multi-candidate first round, winning the third place behind Royal who scored almost 26 percent and Sarkozy at a little more than 31 percent.
Sarkozy, the candidate of President Jacques Chirac's governing party, has refused any direct discussion with Bayrou but has welcomed 19 of the 29 elected deputies of his small Union for French Democracy (UDF) into his fold.
A new poll released Saturday showed that 35 percent of Bayrou's voters would back Royal in the runoff compared with 29 percent for Sarkozy.
An additional 36 percent of the Bayrou electorate, which holds the key to victory, plan to abstain or have yet to make up their minds, according to the Ipsos/Dell survey.
But Sarkozy, a tough-talking former interior minister who won a comfortable lead in round one, remains ahead, with 52.5 percent of voter intentions against 47.5 percent for Royal.
Sarkozy will face off with Royal in a televised debate on Wednesday evening that is expected to be the high point of a months-long presidential campaign dominated by calls for change after 12 years under Chirac.
The election will usher in a younger generation of leaders amid much agonising over how to adapt to globalisation, attack high unemployment and defuse tensions in the high-immigrant suburbs that exploded into rioting in late 2005.
Pledging a "clean break" from the politics of the past, Sarkozy, 52, has centred his campaign around right-wing themes such as the work ethic, national identity, immigration and economic liberalisation.
Royal, 53, promises to protect the country's generous "social model" and her 100-point "presidential pact" contains many new welfare projects to fight poverty and joblessness.
Bayrou won the debate.
Royal better prepared for Wednesday's debate. She is robotic, programmed, and an ideologue who speaks politico-speak, the language of the governing elites. Sarko speaks real talk in real time.
Updates on the fallout from the debate will be posted later.
FReepMail me if you want to get on the FRENCH ELECTION PING LIST.
And the French will do everything imaginable except the very things that would solve these problems.
Thanks for your observations. Interesting.
The turning of France to the right could be a huge step in the WOT.
We just need an honest French president instead of a criminal. Chirac may go into exile to avoid prosecution. He is corrupt enough to fit right in at NO. When Dems hold up the duplicitous allies of the Oil for Food scandal as a reproach of Am foreign policy, I want to puke. They ignore that we had to invade France and Germany. They were enemies, not allies.
"To allow people to dream on that the state will do everything for them, that's over," Bayrou said......"not least because Royal is gonna looooooooose!" he may as well have added. ;')
Any chance we could have a live thread for that?
Royal better prepared for Wednesday’s debate. She is robotic, programmed, and an ideologue who speaks politico-speak, the language of the governing elites.
Cross out the name Royal and insert Clinton and the two could be sisters.....
Either way the debate went, you can be sure that Sarkozy was the punching bag.
Check out #108 on http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/ — the 2-way race may end up looking different than the 3-way race though.
How about “equal time” next for Sarko and Bayrou in a T.V. debate prior to Wednesday? Why would Sarko not demand equal time for himself and Bayrou on television?
Sarko has wisely refused to debate Royal saying that the people have spoken en masse for a runoff between Royal and him. Using American sport’s analogy, he said, the runner up doesn’t get to play in the finals.
MORE ON THE DEBATE:
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=5485148
French candidate debates key also-ran
By Elaine Sciolino
Saturday, April 28, 2007
PARIS: Ségolène Royal took her campaign for the French presidency into new territory on Saturday, engaging in a televised debate with a man who is not even her opponent in an effort to broaden her appeal among voters.
The 100-minute encounter between Royal, the candidate of the left, and François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who was knocked out of the race in the first round, was a first since presidential debates began in France in the 1974 race. Never before has a candidate who made it into the runoff debated one of the losers.
The decision to conduct the debate just eight days before the election was a calculated risk for Royal. She came in six percentage points behind Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate on the right, in the first round of voting on April 22 and needs to capture a sizable proportion of Bayrou’s nearly seven million voters to win.
The debate before hundreds of journalists in a Paris hotel ballroom was not aired live on major French television stations because of election broadcast regulations requiring equal airtime for the candidates.
It was not clear how many French voters saw or heard their exchange, which was aired live on BFM TV, a tiny 24-hour news channel, and on RMC, a major radio station. Many French viewers were unable to gain access to the debate on the television station’s Web site, which apparently was overloaded.
The debate was not a battle of wills; it was not a love fest, either.
“This is an event without precedent that underscores the modernization of political life,” said Royal, who called their encounter a “dialogue” rather than a “debate.” She added that although she and Bayrou did not agree on everything, “millions of French think that on certain difficult issues, we can find common ground.”
Bayrou held to his position that he would not endorse either candidate. Toward the end of the debate, he said, “Nicolas Sarkozy is not my enemy, Ségolène Royal is not my enemy.”
Asked very early on whether he wanted Royal to win, he said bluntly, “I have no intention of entering into this kind of game.”
But Bayrou embraced Royal’s openness, saying that he wanted to “talk together and see if we can make things move.”
Royal was caught in the awkward position of not being able to appear too friendly toward Bayrou, should he at any time attack her. The fact that she made such a dramatic overture to him highlights her independence from the left, including critics in her Socialist Party. It also sets her apart from Sarkozy, whose tone throughout the campaign has been one of confrontation rather than compromise.
Bayrou, who had nothing to lose in the debate, appeared more at ease. His only goal, he said, was to assert his independence and promote his idea about the need to break down party divisions and create a new conciliatory style of politics for France.
But Bayrou, who heads the tiny party Union for French Democracy, is also seeking to both strengthen his standing before parliamentary elections in June and position himself should he try to run for the presidency again in 2012. This week he announced that before the parliamentary elections he intended to create a new centrist party to be called the Democratic Party.
Royal was assertive, at times relaxed, at times noticeably tense. She smiled much of the time, but also shifted in her seat, clenched her jaw muscles and fiddled with her hair.
In a sense, her performance was a window on her debating style before the official debate between her and Sarkozy that will be broadcast live on national television Wednesday.
Sarkozy, who was campaigning Saturday with Labor Minister Jean-Louis Borloo in northern France, mocked the Royal-Bayrou debate. “There they are, the two of them, in a big hotel chatting together,” he said, adding “I, I am in the midst of the French people.”
Since his defeat, Bayrou has been much more critical of Sarkozy than of Royal, portraying him this week as having “a taste for intimidation and threat.”
But in the debate, Bayrou also leveled criticism against Royal — not for her personality, but for her proposals. He called himself in “profound disagreement” with Royal on her economic projects, for example, which he said depended too much on state intervention.
“To allow people to dream on that the state will do everything for them — that’s over,” he said.
He also criticized her proposal that all French people should have a national flag in the cupboard for display on Bastille Day, saying, “It would be as if I said that all the French people must have a photo of their mothers in the living room.”
The debate followed a two-day tussle over how it would be organized. At first it was thought that France’s regional press would conduct the debate but a journalists’ union representing them refused to host it.
Then a major television channel, Canal Plus, stepped forward to broadcast the debate, only to back out a few hours later, citing election broadcast regulations.
The cancellations triggered accusations by both Royal and Bayrou on Friday that Sarkozy had used his powerful contacts in the media to prevent the debate from taking place.
Bayrou said earlier that although he had no proof, he was “certain” that Canal Plus TV had canceled the debate “at Mr. Sarkozy’s demand.”
Royal also criticized Sarkozy, saying earlier, “All the pressure that has taken place, notably within a media-financial system to which Nicolas Sarkozy is heavily linked, has no place in a democratic country where freedom of speech and debate are very important.”
Sarkozy has denied the accusations, telling a rally in the city of Clermont-Ferrand on Friday, “I will allow no one to continue to insult and slander me.”
BFM TV has promised Sarkozy equal time.
Just as long as it helps Sarko get more votes instead of him possibly losing votes by avoiding such a debate, then it’s O.K. I would hate to see Royal end up winning this thing after all of this is done.
“Partnership” makes Sego sound like Hillary Rodham.
Socialism by another name.
I wish government would get out of the business of being “partners” with anyone and anything.
France 24 streams in French and English.
Also, LCI cable news channel in French is on live stream a lot.
The BFM channel is constantly streaming.
Thanks for the info.
It’s good to see they stream in English.
My French is so bad,
by the time I figure out what was said,
the speaker is 4 or 5 sentences on.
there are many similarities between Hillary and her HINO and the Royal/Francois Hollande “partnership, under
which she has borne fiour children, but refuses to marry. It’s all because of the patriarchy, you know.”
In both couple the man is by far the political brains in the family, much smarter, more experienced and more well liked. Both women have stood in the shadows while their “partners” get the top positions and accolades.
The only reason Hillary is running is because Bill can’t. The only reason Sego is running is that the Socialist Party apparatchicks wanted a gimmick like running a women, instead of the morer experienced competent candidate.
Both marriages are fake. Both have made a political deal with the devil.
The defeat of Royal in France would send a message to Americans about what happens when you run a “2 for 1” deal to run the country.
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