WE HAVE TWO DAYS TO TRIUMPH, SARKOZY TELLS LAST CAMPAIGN RALLY

MONTPELLIER, France, May 3, 2007 (AFP) - French right-winger Nicolas Sarkozy called on cheering supporters at his last rally before Sunday's presidential vote to help him "create the conditions for a French rebirth."
    "We have two days left to say goodbye to the heritage of 68," Sarkozy said, referring to the May 1968 student revolts that he has denounced throughout the campaign as the source of France's moral decline.
    "Two days during which I need your ardour, your friendship, your enthusiasm, your energy, your strength," Sarkozy told 15,000 people including the wife of outgoing President Jacques Chirac, gathered in the southern city of Montpellier.
    "Two days for a new energy to rise out of the country's depths, two days for a great popular movement to rise up sweep away all obstacles, all hesitations, all fears, all anguish...," he said to wild cheers from the crowd.
    "Two days to create the conditions for a French rebirth, two days for everything to become possible."
    "Two days for our united family to turn to the silent majority and tell them, yes it's possible... for we have only one will, to bring about the tiumph of the French republic and the French nation.
    With two days to go before his decisive second round battle with socialist rival Segolene Royal, the right-wing favourite appeared increasingly sure of victory Sunday -- with every opinion poll since the April 22 first round giving him a clear lead.
    A survey carried out after a crucial television debate showed that his rival failed to make the breakthrough she needed: some 53 percent of viewers thought Sarkozy was more convincing, compared to 31 percent for Royal.

J-2

The campaign winds down tomorrow. We will know the results by 2pm EST Sunday.

FReepMail me to sign up now for the latest news and results.

SARKO WITH BERNADETTE CHIRAC AT MONPELLIER RALLY

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FINAL PUSH IN FRENCH ELECTION CAMPAIGN
Received Friday, 4 May 2007 02:28:00 GMT

PARIS, May 4, 2007 (AFP) - France's presidential race headed into a final day of campaigning on Friday, as polls showed right-wing front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy extending his lead over Socialist Segolene Royal.
    Sarkozy appeared increasingly sure of victory in Sunday's election, with every opinion poll since the April 22 first round showing a clear lead for the former interior minister.
    The latest figures showed the 52-year-old Sarkozy's lead has grown to six to eight points after Royal failed to deliver a knock-out blow in an ill-tempered televised debate on Wednesday.
    "Throughout this long campaign France has never left me. Whatever the subject of which I was speaking, I was speaking of her," he said Thursday, returning to a favoured theme of the country's "betrayal" by left-wingers of the generation of 1968.
    "We have two days left to say goodbye to the heritage of '68," Sarkozy told supporters at a rally in Montpellier.
    Campaigning officially ends on Friday, with no rallies allowed the day before the election. But despite the latest poll numbers, Royal looked anything but defeated as she marched onto a rock concert stage in Lille.
    "There are just two days left -- don't let up the effort," she told 20,000 wildly cheering supporters, warmed up by thumping music and speeches from party heavyweights.
    "This Sunday, this victory that we want so much for France, is within reach," said the 53-year-old former environment minister, who wants to become France's first woman president.
    Like Sarkozy, Royal says she will bring about change -- but promises a combination of left-wing economic policies and traditional social values, which she pits against the "brutality" of Sarkozy's right-wing agenda.
    The army officer's daughter returned to that theme on Thursday, telling the crowd that she did not want "a France dominated by the law of the strongest."
    "We do not want to appeal to people's dark side, but to the light and hope inside them," she said, calling for "a new France, a protecting France, a fraternal France, a competitive France."
    Royal supporters were convinced that she had come out as the winner of Wednesday's two-and-half-hour debate watched by more than 20 million viewers, despite a survey suggesting the contrary.
    Three pollsters reached by AFP said Sarkozy remained the favourite and that the debate had not reversed the momentum.
    Both candidates sought to address their weaknesses: Royal had to dispel doubts about her presidential stature while Sarkozy faces concerns over his hyper-active personality.
    Royal won kudos for her combativeness but Sarkozy appeared to score more for keeping his cool in an encounter seen as decisive for winning over the nearly seven million voters who backed centrist Francois Bayrou in round one.
    An Ipsos/Dell poll found Bayrou supporters were splitting equally between Sarkozy and Royal.
    The poll showed Sarkozy had extended his lead by one point after the debate to 54 percent against 46 percent for Royal.
    A CSA-Cisco poll recorded a two-point gain in Sarkozy's lead, expecting the former interior minister to come out on top with 53 percent against 47 for Royal.
    Giving a boost to Royal, Bayrou was quoted in Le Monde as saying that she "had done rather well" in the debate. He also announced: "I will not vote for Sarkozy".
    The centre-left newspaper endorsed Royal, urging voters to take a "gamble" on her as the woman who could give the French left new purpose and warning that Sarkozy's "American"-style policies could deepen social inequalities.
    On Friday, Royal travels to the western region of Brittany for two rallies, while Sarkozy was set to participate in a ceremony paying homage to WWII resistance heroes.

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SEGO IN RED SHOWS HER TRUE COLORS

"DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA"

Here is a good recap of the Debate in English.

From the NYTimes
May 3, 2007

Candidates Spar Vigorously as French Vote Nears

By ELAINE SCIOLINO
PARIS, May 2 — He accused her of losing her cool. She accused him of lacking compassion. Nicolas Sarkozy on the right and Ségolène Royal on the left went after each other Wednesday evening in the kind of vivid confrontation that has disappeared from the American scene, where the candidates avoid one another as much as possible.

The two-and-a-half-hour televised debate could determine the outcome of the French presidential election on Sunday.

At times, the candidates seemed like they were more in a local race than vying for the presidency of a nuclear power with the sixth-largest economy. Iraq and France’s relationship with the United States, for example, never came up. Domestic issues, like the wisdom of the 35-hour workweek, public spending for the police and hospitals, and fighting crime took up much more time than France’s place in the world.

Mr. Sarkozy, 52, the son of a Hungarian immigrant with minor aristocratic roots, and Ms. Royal, 53, the daughter of a career army officer, faced different challenges. Mr. Sarkozy had to avoid looking like a sexist bully; Ms. Royal had to prove herself presidential.

Mr. Sarkozy, the former interior and finance minister, had to fight off the demon that has tormented him: his image as an authoritarian figure with a volatile temper. For Ms. Royal, the debate was her last chance to turn around polls that consistently put Mr. Sarkozy in the lead.

The two candidates are competing for the nearly seven million voters who chose the centrist third-place candidate, François Bayrou, in the first round. Mr. Bayrou has refused to endorse either candidate.

Another variable is whether the nearly four million voters who voted for the far-right candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in the first round will heed his call to “abstain en masse,” a move that could pull votes away from Mr. Sarkozy.

Ms. Royal, aware that this was her chance to prove that she is of greater substance than her critics paint her, was on the offensive from the start, repeatedly interrupting Mr. Sarkozy with the line, “Let me finish.”

Mr. Sarkozy kept his temper in check, speaking more slowly and in a more modulated voice than usual.

Toward the end of the debate, Ms. Royal became agitated during a discussion of educating disabled children. She argued that the right had undone the good work that the left had been trying to do, and cast Mr. Sarkozy’s position as “the height of political immorality.”

She accused him of playing the compassion card even though his government had not delivered needed services, indignantly telling him he had described the plight of handicapped children “with a tear in your eye.”

Mr. Sarkozy grabbed the opportunity to bore in on his point that she could not lead France in such a temperamental fashion.

“Calm down,” he told her.

“No, I will not calm down,” she replied.

“Do not point at me with this finger, with this——” he said.

“No. Yes,” she said.

“With this index finger pointed, because frankly——”

“No, I will not calm down,” she said. “No, I will not calm down. I will not calm down.”

“To be president of the republic, you have to be calm,” he said.

She responded: “Not when there are injustices. There are angers that are perfectly healthy because they correspond to people’s suffering. There are angers I will have even when I am president of the republic.”

In the middle of her sentence, Mr. Sarkozy tried to stop her, asking, “Madame Royal, would you allow me to say one word?” But she ignored him.

His voice took on a patronizing tone. “I don’t know why the usually calm Madame Royal has lost her nerve,” he said.

Mr. Sarkozy repeatedly tried to paint Ms. Royal as uninformed. She tried to paint him as overbearing. There was equal-time interruption.

Making this race even more compelling, political analysts were divided on who had “won” the debate, Ségo or Sarko, as they call them here.

Mr. Sarkozy got points for not losing his temper. But Ms. Royal’s losing her temper caused different reactions. Some found it exhilarating, a sign that the left would not be complacent. Others found it unnerving. No one found it boring.

“Sarkozy has lost,” said Dominique Reynié, a professor of political science at Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. “He didn’t dominate the debate even though he’s been the super-favorite since the beginning.”

Nicole Bacharan, a political analyst at the same institute, said: “For me the winner is Sarkozy, it’s clear. Ségolène was the challenger. She had more to prove. She was strong but Sarkozy invoked precise facts, in a more pragmatic and less ideological manner.”

Ms. Royal repeatedly interrupted Mr. Sarkozy to get him to stop interrupting her, saying, “Let me finish,” and things like, “Please stop interrupting me because I know your strategy really well.”

But Mr. Sarkozy was also stopped short in mid-sentence over and over.

“Will you let me finish?” he asked at one point.

“No,” Ms. Royal said.

“Ah,” Mr. Sarkozy replied.

By midway, Ms. Royal’s perpetual smile disappeared from her face. Their tone was reminiscent of a couple bickering at the breakfast table, with the husband barely restraining his sense of superiority and the wife attacking him for not listening to her.

“You understand me perfectly but you pretend you don’t understand,” Ms. Royal told her rival.

Even though she has a reputation of being condescending in meetings, she accused him of being condescending. Even though he has the reputation of losing his temper, she was the one who lost her temper during the debate.

During an argument about nuclear power, for example, Ms. Royal played schoolteacher, asking Mr. Sarkozy, “Do you know how much of electricity consumption in France comes from nuclear power?”

When Mr. Sarkozy said it was 50 percent, Ms. Royal corrected him, saying it was 17 percent. To that, Mr. Sarkozy replied, “No, Madame, that is not correct.”

She lectured him “Go do your homework.”

He argued back, “I may not be very informed about the issue, but I’m consistent.”

Indeed, both were wrong: the answer is close to 80 percent.

Even though her attempt to appeal directly to women has not resonated, Ms. Royal pressed many women’s issues throughout the debate.

She raised the case of a police officer who was raped recently in a Paris suburb because, Ms. Royal said, the money had been cut for her to have a partner.

She proposed retirement benefits for stay-at-home mothers. She described “choosing to raise one’s children as, after all, the most beautiful profession.”

Ms. Royal, who has often been accused of making factual errors, struggled to prove she was right.

“Let’s go to the bitter end on every issue,” she said. She also said, “I know all the topics well.”

While they were speaking about the economy, she summed up her philosophy of leadership, saying, with a little smile, “I will be the president of what works.”

Mr. Sarkozy replied, caustically, “People don’t vote for us to go complicate what works, but on the contrary, to fix what doesn’t.”

Still, Mr. Sarkozy was gracious at the end, expressing his respect for Ms. Royal’s “talent and competence.” But she kept her distance, saying, “I abstain from personal judgments.”

Maia de la Baume contributed reporting

Excellent article from IHT

Shows just how anti-American and hateful Royal really is :

“I believe the world needs a multipolar force, and that the United States must not be considered as a superpower.”

French campaigners blind to the outside world
By John Vinocur
May 3, 2007

PARIS: When an interviewer asked Valéry Giscard d’Estaing the other day what he thought of the minimal attention paid to international affairs in France’s presidential election campaign, he corrected his questioner.

There was no interest at all, the former president said. “It’s a France living with the shutters closed,” he said. “The French have been sitting around talking to themselves as if the world didn’t exist.”

That’s largely because the candidates don’t think votes based on foreign policy are there for the taking.

A country confused about how to end the misery of its high unemployment and low growth, France likes the prerogatives that come with United Nations Security Council membership and its hold on big-power status as a nuclear-armed nation. But it doesn’t want to hear and think much about its diminished place in the world, or the prospect of new responsibilities and having to take sides.

In the head-to-head television debate Wednesday night between Nicholas Sarkozy, the Gaullist front-runner in the runoff Sunday, and the Socialist Ségolène Royal, international affairs, apart from Turkey’s possible entry into the European Union and the EU’s constitution, got a total of 17 minutes of attention at 11 p.m. in the back-and-forth that bumped and stumbled over two and a half hours.

No mention of Afghanistan or Iraq; ditto for a problematical America and an increasingly threatening Russia. It was not an evening to bolster France’s claim to a slice of international leadership.

Rather it was one of disputed statistics, Royal’s bursts of rage and seeming mood swings, and Sarkozy’s attempts at transforming the debate’s disorder and his opponent’s anger into a subliminal it’s-me-or-chaos warning to carry him through the final days of the campaign.

Still, the reality about France’s place in the world is that Sarkozy thought too much campaign focus on it would bring him unnecessarily close to a vote-getting liability: his nonhysterical, even polite relations with those who, in the majority French view, are the awful-awfuls of the Bush administration.

As for Royal, she left what she thinks of the great beyond in confusion, praising expedient justice in China, and arguing that regardless of who was in power there, America’s unilateralist nature inevitably tempted it toward the use of force.

Yet the attentive follower of the campaign could find some palpable foreign policy departures from Jacques Chirac’s 12 years of French exceptionalism über alles in the debris of texts and tapes left from the candidates’ six months of talk.

Sarkozy, trying hard to upset no one, avoided casting his part of those changes as the rupture in French habits he once made his creed. But the new directions are palpable in the Sarkozy approach, and they are interesting.

On Iran, Sarkozy has turned his back on Chirac’s nonchalance about the effect of Iran’s emergence as a military force with nukes. That idea is unacceptable, he says. “We can’t be weak in this area.”

Going beyond any countermeasures Chirac supported, Sarkozy has opened the door to the idea that if new Security Council sanctions against Iran become impossible because of Russian and Chinese resistance, then a group of countries could apply additional sanctions on its own.

“Nothing’s excluded a priori,” Sarkozy has said. “What counts is effectiveness. On sanctions outside the Security Council, that’s not a problem of principle.”

Sarkozy’s harder position on Iran is complemented by his much tougher vision of Russia, effectively burying the years when Chirac and Gerhard Schröder courted Vladimir Putin.

Sarkozy has made clear that he has no tolerance for Russia inserting itself as a veto power into European business or the Atlantic Alliance.

“On NATO, I want the rapprochement started in Ukraine and Georgia to continue,” he said. “The current political dialogue can be a possible first step toward their integration.”

Asked by Le Monde if Russia should be allowed to increase its 5 percent interest in EADS, the European aeronautic, space and defense concern in which France is a participant, Sarkozy’s plain answer was no. Establishing his sense of the limits of Europe’s “strategic partnership” with Russia, he offered an equally plain explanation of why not: Russia’s heightened involvement could threaten “our independence and national sovereignty.”

Because it would be a direct disavowal of Chirac, who has backed his candidacy, Sarkozy has steered clear anything suggesting a complete overhaul of France’s policy in the Middle East, where its influence in Arab countries is deeply diminished and next to nil in Israel.

Sarkozy has also reversed his earlier dismissal of Chirac’s thesis of a multipolar world order, to accept his assertion that global power is spread between poles like America, Europe, Russia, China, Asia and Latin America.

But this comes unburdened by Chirac’s essential subtext: one insisting that Europe’s role is one of a brake or counterweight to America.

Rather, Sarkozy told a television interviewer last month that Europe was not in competition with America on the world stage.

Royal has also taken leave of some of Chirac’s positions. Like Sarkozy, she opposes the proposal Chirac initiated with Schröder to drop the EU embargo on selling arms to China.

On Iran, she claims, “I was the first in France to take a very firm position.” But this involves a muddled argument, repeated in the debate, that Royal has never explained away.

Contrary to the provisions of the international nonproliferation agreements that are the legal basis for action against Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, Royal wants Iran deprived of all access to civil nuclear power.

Throughout, as much as America has been a charged subject weighing on Sarkozy’s campaign, relations with the United States have been a personal problem for Royal, which she never seemed intent to resolve.

While portraying Sarkozy’s visit with Bush last year as an act of abject fealty, she was unable after several attempts to set up meetings in America with Democratic leaders, including Hillary Clinton. Presumably, they saw Royal’s description of an incorrigible American hyper-power, largely immune to change no matter who was elected in 2008, as making her a potentially unmanageable guest.

In her last statement two weeks ago on America’s role, Royal said, “I believe the world needs a multipolar force, and that the United States must not be considered as a superpower.”

Huh?

The big debate provided no elaboration from either side. Far from a biting or provocative French gaze on the world, reworking Giscard d’Estaing’s image, the candidates reflected only faint light from behind France’s tightly drawn curtains.