Posted on 05/05/2007 6:02:27 PM PDT by blam
Poll leader unable to fire his final shot
By Kim Willsher in Paris, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:12am BST 06/05/2007
In what he planned as the last word before today's French election, the presidential front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy accused his rival, Ségolène Royal, of making "warlike" remarks that undermined democracy.
As voting began in France's overseas territories yesterday, Mr Sarkozy attacked the socialist candidate's warning of riots if she lost as "a worrying form of intolerance".
French expatriates vote in the French Presidential election
Mr Sarkozy, 52, who is up to 10 points ahead of Miss Royal, 53, in the opinion polls, launched his final attack in an exclusive interview with the daily newspaper Le Parisien, which he had expected to be published yesterday.
However, advisers to Miss Royal, who had herself been interviewed by the paper the previous day, complained that its publication would breach election rules which banned campaigning or election "propaganda" from midnight on Friday.
As a result the interview was pulled from the newspaper.
In the interview, posted instead on the newspaper's website, Mr Sarkozy responded to his rival's suggestion that voting for him constituted a "risk", declaring: "I don't believe we have ever heard such violent and menacing suggestions in the history of the Fifth Republic.
"To explain that if you don't vote for a candidate there will be violence is quite simply to refuse the democratic and republican expression of opinion. We have never seen this before, never. This warlike language is a negation of basic rules of democracy."
He described her remarks as "verbal violence" and said he could not believe his victory would spark unrest.
"What, you mean to say that certain people will contest the rules of the Republic and the law of the majority? I cannot imagine it," he said.
Miss Royal had told French radio on Friday that "choosing Nicolas Sarkozy would be a dangerous choice".
Asked if she thought there would be violence in the suburbs, she replied: "I think so."
Mr Sarkozy has been deeply unpopular in Paris's outer-city suburbs since the autumn of 2005 when he described local troublemakers as racaille, or rabble or scum, and threatened to clean them out.
His comments sparked a wave of rioting, car burning and violence.
The ambitious, tough-talking former interior minister flew back to Paris on Friday to give the Parisien interview after a whistle-stop visit to a memorial to the French Resistance in the Alps.
The Sunday Telegraph, the only British newspaper accompanying Mr Sarkozy at his campaign finale, watched him deliver a short history lesson, 5,000 ft up a mountain, before being presented with a platter of cheese and a cow bell.
Standing on the Plateau des Glières, where 500 Resistance fighters - many just teenagers - made a last stand against a 10,000-strong occupying force in 1944, Mr Sarkozy said his decision to end his campaign here was symbolic.
"I came here to understand what happened less than a century ago in France. These things must never happen again, and that's the whole point of politics: to be a barrage against the follies of men," he said.
"I like mountains, but this is not just a mountain. It is a place with immense importance in the history of France. Here, people fought for France and died for France."
Mr Sarkozy, an unabashed admirer of Britain and America, borrowed phrases from President John F Kennedy and Tony Blair when he said present-day youths might take example from the Resistance fighters' sacrifice.
He said of their leader, Tom Morel, who was 28: "He didn't ask what France could do for him, he asked what he could do for France, and that message is very modern. Being a citizen carries rights but also responsibilities."
During the visit, Mr Sarkozy was thrown a question about his wife Cécilia, who has not been seen in public with her husband since the first-round vote two weeks ago. He failed even to acknowledge it.
Rumours have circulated that their marriage is under strain again. Mrs Sarkozy, who once said she didn't see herself as France's First Lady because "it bores me", left her husband two years ago and was photographed in New York with another man. The couple were later reconciled.
Miss Royal spent Friday on a mini-tour of areas of Brittany that voted strongly for her in the first round.
If, when the first results are announced at 8pm today, Mr Sarkozy has won, he has vowed to go into retreat for 10 days' rest and contemplation "to reflect" on his responsibilities.
Campaign insiders suggest he may go to Saint Pierre de Solesmes Abbey, in the Sarthe region of west France, near the home of his former government colleague and campaign leader, François Fillon.
Yesterday, a member of the abbey, which was founded in 1010, denied any knowledge of a booking by Mr Sarkozy.
In the banned interview, Mr Sarkozy said his many visits across France had revealed the "passion the French have for politics".
About 85 per cent of voters turned out for the first round of balloting.
He said he was approaching today's deciding vote "without exaltation, without excitement, with lots of calm".
Algore and sKerry made these statements about unrest during their failed attempts and our MSM fell all over themselves repeating it.
His comments sparked a wave of rioting, car burning and violence.
The usual Muslim way of proving someone "wrong".
A slam against him. I hear Ms. Royal has four kids and has never been married. Some paragon of virtue, she is. Do they get extra welfare payments for popping out kids in France? Well, at least she's reproducing -- the average child-bearing rate in France (and for that matter most of Europe and Russia) is only about 1.7 per couple.
Mr Sarkozy responded to his rival's suggestion that voting for him constituted a "risk", declaring: "I don't believe we have ever heard such violent and menacing suggestions in the history of the Fifth Republic.No surprise though, Royal is a Nazi, as are all socialists.
"To explain that if you don't vote for a candidate there will be violence is quite simply to refuse the democratic and republican expression of opinion. We have never seen this before, never. This warlike language is a negation of basic rules of democracy."
He described her remarks as "verbal violence" and said he could not believe his victory would spark unrest.Y'gotta admit, he's got a way with words. This can be seen both as a negation of what Royal said -- and that what she said is or should be insulting to the Moslem hoodlums -- and as a tongue-in-cheek commentary about the hoodlums themselves. Heads he wins, tails she loses.
"What, you mean to say that certain people will contest the rules of the Republic and the law of the majority? I cannot imagine it," he said.
Should have pinged ya here, and see message 6.
Sarkozy set to unleash new French revolution
********************************EXCERPT**********************************
The campaign has been extraordinarily bitter, reflecting a polarised and divided people who know they are making a historic choice between very different individuals and very different programmes. 'If Sarkozy has the will and the ability to turn his announced policies into reality, he will turn France upside down,' said Ivan Rioufol, a leader writer at the right-wing Le Figaro newspaper. Royal, 53, also provokes fierce emotions, attacked by the right as an incompetent spendthrift representative of an unreformed left responsible for decades of cultural, social and economic decline. But the career politician, daughter of an army officer and educated at elite universities, remains far less controversial than her rival, the son of an immigrant seen as an outsider even by the establishment right.
For those who are voting against him, Sarkozy, whose electoral strategy has been to hunt votes amid the third of French voters who profess a 'sympathy' with the ideas of the extreme right, is 'the abomination of abominations'. 'This is a man who shook the hand of George Bush, who will destroy the French social model, who will institute a police state,' said Geraldine Chene, a Lyon-based Socialist activist. 'We hate him and all he stands for.'
Sarkozy's uncompromising statements on immigration are behind much of the fierce emotion he excites. Lilian Thuram, the French football star, has vociferously attacked Sarkozy's 'racist' rhetoric. He told The Observer yesterday he hoped that 'if Sarkozy is President he has the wisdom to find the words to unite the French'. Key public figures, such as the former tennis player and singer Yannick Noah, have pledged to leave the country in the event of his victory.
'You would think we were on the brink of civil war,' said Jacques Marseille, an author and historian.
For Mohammed Chirani, 29, who is walking across France to call for unity among his fellow citizens, 'the election has crystallised all the faultlines that divide the nation. I've never seen so much fear and hate. I'm not optimistic for the country, whoever wins.'
And though Royal's claims last week that a Sarkozy victory would lead to 'violence' were dismissed as scaremongering by her opponent's media team, significant social strife is likely if he wins. Many local mayors in areas where tensions are already high - Sarkozy is hated in many of the poorest housing estates in France for having described delinquents as 'scum' - are planning heavy police deployments tonight.
'This is a man who shook the hand of George Bush, who will destroy the French social model, who will institute a police state,' said Geraldine Chene, a Lyon-based Socialist activist. 'We hate him and all he stands for.'She sez that as if it's a bad thing. ;')
It was the hand shake....
Prayers.
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