Posted on 05/02/2007 3:47:23 PM PDT by Cincinna
French women in general know how to put themselves together fashion wise...I’m not so sure about their bathing habits though...
THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE (owned by The NYTimes and The Washington Post) WEIGHS IN:
French candidates stick to their scripts in a heated debate
By Katrin Bennhold and Doreen Carvajal
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
PARIS:: In a long awaited debate on national television, Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the right, and Ségolène Royal, a Socialist and the first woman with a serious chance at the presidency, traded barbs Wednesday evening but barely strayed from known positions before an audience of millions of people seeking an answer to the question of who should lead this country out of its malaise.
Royal centered her attack on Sarkozy’s record as a member of the outgoing government, while he sought to question her competence to lead the country.
For two hours, in a heavily domestic discussion, the two aired France’s problems: unemployment, crime, young people without hope for the future, public health and pension systems threatened by drastic reduction of funds.
This was the first presidential debate in France in 12 years and Royal came into it needing a strong knockout punch.
Before the face-off began, commentators expressed doubts that the encounter could radically alter the campaign before the vote Sunday. Nearly nine in 10 voters say they have already decided who would get their ballot and Sarkozy has been ahead in the opinion polls since mid-January.
Sarkozy, 52, was chosen by lots as the opening speaker so Royal, 53, won the last word in an encounter that was meticulously planned, with the candidates seated exactly 2.2 meters from each other across a white table.
Both were allotted exactly the same air time.
The first question of substance was about the style each candidate would bring to the presidency. They quickly moved to a sharp exchange centered on the fears of the French ? unemployment and crime ? with Sarkozy defending his four years as interior minister and Royal accusing his government of neither suppressing crime nor giving sufficient funds or protection to public services ? from the police to hospitals.
“What have you done in five years? For five years you had all the power.
There is a problem of credibility,” Royal said after Sarkozy outlined his plans for institutional and economic reforms.
“You talking to me about credibility, Madame Royal?” Sarkozy retorted.
Sparks flew between the two as moderators parried their volleys. In the middle of an exchange on schooling for the handicapped, Royal sought to paint Sarkozy as unreasonably hard-hearted. He urged her to calm down, whereupon she insisted three times: “I will not calm down!” Sarkozy then said: “To be president of the Republic you have to be calm..”
It was important to draw the right conclusions of the past few years in France, he said, pointing to the strong showing of the nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002. The president is someone, he said, who must “keep his word and really engage in a few topics.”
“I will speak much more frequently to the French,” he added in a clear jab at President Jacques Chirac, who at moments of crisis was sometimes silent during his 12 years in power. “I don’t want to hide behind taboos,” he said.
A combative Royal riposted by sketching a devastating picture of France today, a country deeply in debt with two million people living below the poverty line, three million unemployed and prey to rising violence.
“I want to get France out of the situation it finds itself in today,” she said, challenging Sarkozy to say whether as a member of the government he accepted responsibility for the current state of affairs.
Sarkozy came straight back at her: “Yes, Madame Royal,” he said. “I am responsible for a part of the record of this government.” But he added that when the center-right government took over from the Socialists in 2002, “I found a situation that was catastrophic.”
Sarkozy threw back at her the record of the Socialist government under Lionel Jospin ? of which Royal was a member. He pulled out his own statistics, asserting that the crime rate today was much improved from the days when the Socialists were in power.
Sarkozy agreed with Royal that the debt was a major problem, but said it had not sprouted up in the last five years. Part of his solution, he said, would be to replace only one of every two civil servants workers who vacates a position.
Royal went on the attack. “If I were elected president of the republic, the rights of the republic will be protected,” she said. “No, Mr. Sarkozy, I will not reduce social services,” she then declared, adding that if his government had not closed so many classrooms, for example, schools and schoolchildren would be doing better.
Coming to what Royal described as the central question, work, the two clashed again. She called Sarkozy’s proposals “inefficient and even dangerous” and asked him, “If you think the 35-hour work week created so much damage, why didn’t you get rid of it?”
“I want to re-launch growth,” she said, adding that she would rather give a job to a young person than give a gift to business in the form of exoneration from payroll taxes on overtime work beyond the 35-hour week.
“I am in favor of a 35-hour week,” Sarkozy insisted. But he said people should have the right to work more if they wanted, especially people with low salaries. “What good is extra time off if at the end of the month there’s no money left?” he asked. “Let people make more money if they agree to work more.”
In one of the more heated exchanges of the evening, Sarkozy accused Royal of having no credible economic program.
“It seems to me that when it comes to debt,” he said, “you given no indication how to reduce it. That’s your right. When it comes to growth, you have given no means of reviving growth. I have: because you’re right we need more growth. The problem of France is that there is about 1 percentage point of growth less than in other big democracies and economies in the world. Why: For a simple reason, Madame Royal: Because we work less than the others.
“It may surprise you,” he said, that none of the 10 countries in Europe that have fuller employment have the 35-hour week. “You want more civil servants?” he added. “That’s nice. But how do you pay that?” She shot back: “Don’t deform my words. I will maintain the number of civil servants not increase it. I will redeploy them in a more efficient way.”
The two candidates spent most of the debate on domestic matters, only turning to foreign and security policy after the first two hours.
The debate was moderated by Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, anchor of the evening newscast on TF1, the leading French station, and Arlette Chabot of state-run France 2. Both had interviewed the candidates several times separately, but neither had moderated a presidential debate before.
Broadcasters expected 20 million people to tune in to the debate. In many usually animated streets of Paris cafés and restaurants, normally bustling, were populated with only handfuls of people, and the sounds of the debate blared through open windows.
The Charlie Rose interview is interesting. Unfortunately, it is dubbed into English.
Wow, She’s got him on the ropes and is just wailing away at him. lol
That works for me. I’m afraid I did quite poorly in any / all language classes during my time as a student.
“Royal showed that she does not have the temperament to be President of a great country. She was angry, and admitted she was, was short tempered, and rude.
Sarko looked and acted Presidential.”
Predit.
I think the NYTimes squeezed the WaPo out of its partial ownership of the IntHeraldTrib.
Great news.
The Tories in Britain also need a decent leader who doesn’t believe in gay marriage! The conservative vote in Britain is beginning to divide between the Tories and the newer United Kingdom Independence Party, and the Tories continuing slow move to the “political left” on social issues is mostly to blame.
It is interesting.
Blair endorses Sarko whilst Sego picks up endorsements from Chaves as well as an assorted band of Iranian terrorists :-)
That said: The peoples mujahedin are a quite interesting entity. I believe Richard Perle, Tom Tancredo and John Ashcroft are among its supporters.
Cheers.
THE LONDON TELEGRAPG WEIGHS IN:
Sarkozy and Royal lock horns in TV showdown
By Henry Samuel in Paris
Last Updated: 2:04am BST 03/05/2007
Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal came face to face in a television studio known as “the boxing ring” last night, with Miss Royal immediately on the offensive in a debate that could swing Sunday’s French presidential election.
Before an estimated 20 million viewers Miss Royal, the Socialist candidate, told Mr Sarkozy, the Right-wing front runner, that his “zero tolerance” policy on crime while interior minister had failed.
“You are in part responsible for the situation in which France finds itself today,” Miss Royal said in her opening remarks, accusing the government of failing to tackle unemployment and overseeing an increase in street crime.
“Today, you can see that the French are very worried about the rise in violence and aggression in French society,” she said.
“The number of violent acts at school has risen by 26 per cent.
“I want to be the president who creates a France where aggression and violence is receding, a France that will win the battle against unemployment and an expensive life, and that will make inequalities decrease.”
Mr Sarkozy, the leader of the UMP party, hit back saying that a rise in crime had happened under the last Socialist government.
He said: “I was interior minister for four years. I found a catastrophic situation which went a long way in explaining the defeat of your friends in the government to which you belonged at the time.’’
Mr Sarkozy then attacked France’s laws on a 35-hour working week, which Miss Royal champions, saying they had been “disastrous” for the nation and had spread a “malaise”, particularly in hospitals.
Miss Royal, however, said she understood that nurses did not wish to work longer hours and the only problem was that not enough of them had been employed.
In the studio the two finalists faced one another six feet apart at a square table while they answered questions from France’s two best-known interviewers. Fitting their political views, Miss Royal sat on the left, while Mr Sarkozy was on the right.
Such televised debates have been held in every French election since 1974 except in 2002, when Jacques Chirac refused to meet the far-Right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Last night’s encounter was seen by both sides as crucial in swaying millions of floating voters, particularly the seven million who backed centrist François Bayrou in the first round of the vote on April 22. Despite repeated overtures, Miss Royal has won over only a third of the Bayrou electorate but needs two thirds to win.
Mr Sarkozy has sought to present himself during the election campaign almost as an opposition leader, promising to break with the past if he takes over.
“We cannot continue to do politics as before,” he said in last night’s debate.
Previous debates have produced some killer one-liners. In a clash with François Mitterrand in 1974, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing coined the phrase: “You do not have a monopoly on the heart”, which was seen as tipping the election in his favour - he won by less than 400,000 votes.
In 1988, Mr Mitterrand outwitted Mr Chirac, his prime minister.
“This evening, I am not your prime minister and you are not the president. We are two equal candidates. Permit me to call you Mr Mitterrand,” said Mr Chirac.
“You’re absolutely right, Mr prime minister,” came the reply.
However, before the debate Mr Sarkozy, 52, was keen to play down the importance of the event: “I don’t think that the French are going to make their choice of president for the next five years based on an impression from a two-hour debate,” he said.
Mr Sarkozy had the most to lose: he has been consistent favourite in recent months, and has kept a lead over Miss Royal in polls published since the first round, in which he scored 31.2 per cent compared to Miss Royal’s 25.9 per cent.
The latest Ipsos poll yesterday gave Mr Sarkozy 53.5 per cent of the vote against 46.5 per cent for Miss Royal. A total of 87 per cent said they had made up their mind. Both candidates had meticulously prepared for last night’s television encounter. Mr Sarkozy took advice from Eric Besson, the Socialist’s former chief economist who defected to his side during the campaign.
Mr Besson, who since quitting the Royal camp has written a best-selling book on her failings, has spent the past few days at Mr Sarkozy’s side pinpointing all the weak links in her “presidential pact” - particularly in economic matters.
The man who only months ago described Mr Sarkozy as an “American neo-conservative with a French passport” pledged allegiance to the Right-wing candidate at a rally last week, in which he warned him to expect more “demonisation”.
The first and only debate in the closely-fought election race was shown live on France’s two main television channels and was estimated to have been watched by nearly half of France’s 44.5 million voters.
How do you explain the reports that she was “magnificent”? Of course it was Jack Lang who said it. Mais comme meme!
Jean d’Ormesson said Sarko looked like a weak little lamb
Are these French operating on a total other planet? It was obvious he has the temperament to be President, she doesn’t. Obvious that he has clear, precise plans, she has “ideas”. Obvious that he could back up every plan, obvious she didn’t have a clue.
I don’t get the comments I am reading in the French papers, the English as well.
Here’s an another link to the debate, there’s 3 parts. click on ‘voir la video’ to the right of their pics :)
Well Royal is single and seems to have the same morality as Mssr. Clinton
MORE UPDATES FROM BOZ AT French Election 2007
Francois Hollande (Head of PS and Royal partner):
“The debate was profitable. Segolene led and even dominated the exchange (...). She showed (...) credibility. She also showed coherence.”
Julien Dray (Royal spokesperson):
“Those which did not know Ségolène Royal discovered a president, a woman of authority, convictions. Several times, Nicolas Sarkozy was on the defensive. Perhaps it is that he did not expect such a confrontation and such an intensity.
Rachida Dati (Sarkozy spokesperson):
“He was very clearly and very precise, which was not the case of Ségolène Royal who throughout this debate was very fuzzy, indeed in confusion (...) She added confusion to confusion, fuzziness to fuzziness.”
Valerie Pecresse (UMP spokesperson):
“This debate, it is Nicolas Sarkozy who won it. Because everyone thought that he was going to be unnerved. Because all the campaign of the PS was only founded on its character, and the fact that it was to make fear.”
Well I have met French female tourists and talked to men who have dated them and in general I was very unimpressed by the slovenly habits of the French but really Europeans in general.
Many shower only on Fridays/Saturdays before going out for their weekly sortie. Americans, Australians, Africans and Australians bathe daily or more than once.
our presidential debate format, while facilitating the use of slogans, bromides & banal generalities, makes it practically impossible to contrast between the candidates
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