France's three horse race

A whiff of panic is coming from the headquarters of France's two big presidential candidates this morning.  An idea that was preposterous only two months ago has become entirely plausible. François Bayrou, the mild-mannered centrist, now has a chance of knocking out both Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy and winning the Elysée Palace for himself in May.

Strange things happen in French elections, with the two-round voting system and the mutinous mood in a country that feels that its politicians have betrayed it for the past 25 years. In 2002,  Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far right dinosaur, reaped the protest vote and eliminated the Socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round. This time, Bayrou, a former education minister,  has emerged as a far more acceptable protest candidate and the latest polls show that he has a good chance of dismissing Royal, the Socialist, in the first round and then beating Sarkozy  in a run-off. So it is not surprising that both Ségo and Sarko came over tetchy and weary in parallel television appearances last night.   

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Without getting carried away -- the first round is still six weeks away -- here's the state of play. The notion that we are in a three-horse race emerged yesterday with a CSA poll that gives Bayrou 24 per cent of first-round voting intentions. Royal was at 25 per cent and Sarkozy at 26. The BVA firm put them at 21, 24 and 28 per cent respectively. “Anything can happen. It’s totally open this time,” said Jean-Daniel Lévy, of CSA. “It is quite clear that, since this morning, all the [campaign] meters have been reset at zero.” The sense of uncertainty is reflected by polls showing that more than 40 per cent of voters have not made up their minds.

One uncertainty has been removed with President Chirac's decision to appear on television on Sunday to announce his retirement from politics after 40 years. No one imagined that he would seek a third term, but he has unsettled Sarkozy, 52, the heir to his party, by keeping open the option. Chirac, 74, is not expected to endorse Sarkozy, with whom he has been in dispute for a decade.

With his anti-establishment rhetoric and amiable demeanour, Bayrou is winning conservative converts who are reluctant to vote for the excitable and very aggressive Sarkozy. But the immediate threat is to Royal, 53. The Socialists’ chief polling expert has said that “there is now a real statistical risk for Ségolène in the first round,” le Monde reported. Sarkozy would face a grave threat if Bayrou eliminated Royal and reached the second round on May 6 with the Left and Centre lining up behind him.

The BVA agency found that at present Bayrou would defeat Sarkozy by 55 to 45 per cent. But Sarkozy would win by 53 per cent to 47 if his opponent were Royal. Taking account of this, Sarkozy’s team is pulling its punches from Royal, hoping that she will survive into the second round. He is trying to woo the Centre while maintaining his appeal to hard-Right voters tempted by Le Pen.

To counter Bayrou, Sarkozy has recruited as his campaign president Simone Veil, 79, a former centrist Cabinet minister who enjoys almost saint-like status as a pioneering woman politician. A survivor of Auschwitz, Veil legalised abortion in 1975 as Health Minister under President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the founder of Bayrou’s UDF. Veil fell out with Bayrou in 1989 and is determined to do help ensure the upstart's defeat. .

Ségo and Sarko have united to attack the interloper in their duel. Sarkozy’s spokes-woman dimissed  Bayrou as “a bearer of right-wing values, but with much less ambition, unclear and less courageous” than Sarkozy. The Socialists are begging supporters not to desert Royal in favour of the new darling of the opinion polls. Bayrou is a conservative posing as neutral, they say. “We are saying to our electors that they must not misplace their votes,” Jack Lang, Royal’s spokesman, said. “They must rally around the only candidate of change, Ségolène Royal.” In Lyon, Royal noted that at least a third of voters had not made up their minds. “I am certain that I will prove in the end that I am the candidate who will bring about change,” she said.

Bayrou predicted that he would become the target of Left and Right. “They have alternated power between them for 25 years so they are going to defend their monopoly tooth and nail,” he said. “What they underestimate is that the French have decided to change.”

Bayrou, who was visiting Brussels yesterday to promote his pro-European creed, said that, as “someone who has his feet on the earth”, he was not surprised by his rise. Such allusions are part of his image as a no-non-sense horse-breeder from the Pyrenees who began as a provincial teacher. To mark the contrast with the Parisian backgrounds of Mr Sarkozy and Ms Royal, Mr Bayrou has adopted as his symbol a tractor.

His project for mild reform and governing with a coalition of like-minded politicians has charmed voters weary of the war between Left and Right. Both big camps dismiss his ideas as vague, disingenuous and unworkable.

His presidential victory would raise the prospect of paralysis after parliamentary elections scheduled for June, they say. Since he leads a tiny party, Bayrou would probably have to govern in alliance with either the Socialists or the UMP. Life will now become much harder for Bayrou as he loses his outsider’s aura and comes under serious scrutiny as a candidate. Le Monde and Libération both accused him this week of dishonesty in casting himself as open to the Left because he had served only in centre-right governments.

For the moment, though Bayrou is on the proverbial roll. One of his horses, a filly called Alix Road, won an important race in St Cloud, the western Paris track, on Wednesday. Le Pen, incidentially, lives in St Cloud. We should not forget that fourth horse who is still running hard in the presidential race.   

Comments

[Luxaeternam]

Bayrou's role seems to be essentially symbolic. He is the 'third man' for the simple reason that he has the capacity to govern, while the same is not true of Le Pen whose participation, incidentally, is still not certain.
The crux of the matter, to my mind, is this : will left-wing voters be more 'pro-ségolène' or 'anti-sarko'? Given that Sarkozy is likely to beat Ségolène in the second round, voters now see Bayrou as the person most capable to beat Sarkozy. Any socialist voter that has an ounce of common sense and the humility to 'betray' the cause will probably vote Bayrou in the first round. Others, convinced that the party has made the right choice, will cling to the hope that enough French voters consider Ségolène to be presidential material - an unlikely situation.

[Robert Marchenoir]

Bayrou for president would be the worst solution.

This would flatter the French's revolutionary streak for a very short while, since he raised to these unlikely heights by posing as a palatable anti-establishment candidate.

At the same time, he has the reassuring quality that neither Jean-Marie Le Pen nor Nicolas Sarkozy have.

The problem is, he probably won't have the guts (nor the political support, for that matter) to embark on the necessary reforms. You cannot be anti-establishment and ultimately be nice to everyone.

Make no mistake: reforming France won't be easy nor pretty. Opposition will be fierce. Expect months of demonstrations, strikes and probably street violence.

The French newsmagazine Le Point recently disclosed that the second in command of the country's main union, Le Duigou of CGT, is about to be appointed by the state to one of the best-paid civil service posts. It comes with a hefty yearly check of 100 000 to 150 000 €.

The logic behind that is simple. Le Duigou is 59. He will retire at 60. Holding this post for just a year will entitle him to a lifetime pension based on that salary.

Now you have to realize that the pension of a private sector worker is based on the 25 -- I think -- best paid years. This is considerably less favorable than the pension of a civil servant, which is based on the last -- and presumably higher -- salary of a lifetime.

This is one of the most blatant privileges of public sector employees. Most unions, and CGT among them, of course, vigorously oppose any reform that would align public pensions with private ones.

Thanks to Le Point, we know now that this is not only to protect their clientele, but also their leaders' own -- considerably higher -- financial perks.

Do you seriously believe that the French unions, with their huge nuisance power, will let go easily of these heaps of money they milk out of the system?

If they elect Bayrou, the French will soon discover, once again, that being revolutionary in words and moderate in action leads nowhere.

They will have fooled themselves into thinking that you can have radical change and not suffer any consequences.

We have been there before. We love rattling sabers and doing nothing.

[alan morgan]

All you recount may be well be true but I can tell you that people lie when asked who they will vote for. Round the dinner table on Sunday lunchtime, after many bottles of wine, the name that kept on being emphasised was... Sarko. Here in the South they like a strong person. Royal ain't got what it takes. If she is elected then, after disaster, Sarko will come back. He is not going away bacause he speaks for common sense. Not failed communist dogma of thirty years ago.As for Bayrou, well another Paddy Ashdown.Lft hand flapping in the wind.

[Thomas R. Dean]

I no longer see any way that Royal can win. Should she get into the second round, she'll be destroyed- whether against Sarkozy or against Bayrou.

It seems to me that the critical point is the extent to which Sarkozy - far more to the right than Chirac ever was - can get Le Pen voters to vote in the second round. If he can truly deflate LePen, he might win against Bayrou.

And seconding some posts above, obviously LePen and Sarkozy offer the prospect of greatest change from the policies of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Whether people want such a change is another question. But Royal and Bayrou are wrong to make "change" their byword - no one is going to believe that Sarkozy's or LePen's polices are more similar than those of Bayrou or Royal -- to the policies followed by D'Estaing, Mitterand, Chirac, and their Prime Ministers. No one.

[CHEVRIER Marie]

Sarkozy's policy is not so different from that of Le Pen, especially concerning immigration. Moreover, his aggressiveness and his patent ambitiousness make him very unpopular. He hasen't made anything good during the last five years he spent in the french government, so why should he change now ? On the other hand, the socialist party does shelter too many internal fights to be credible.
Bayrou appears to be a sensible man, a balanced man who is less moved by personal ambitions than his competitors. Moreover, he is obviously a better technician able to gather competences of all edges (cf Spartacus group). And contrary to Sarko and Ségo, he's the only one who stresses the fact that the necessary changes will be painful.

[Sandrine L.]

In an interview in Le Monde last week, Bayrou stated that, if elected, he would move to create a new, larger party on the centre to contest the legislative elections. Chirac and his supporters did the same in '02 when the RPR and elements of the UDF merged to give rise to the UMP. I see no reason why Bayrou may not be able to create a viable new party/movement in France.

I, for one, am underwhelmed by Segolene Royal. To me, she is a real lightweight and probably won't even make it to the second round. And that is a tragic prospect to me because I support the Parti Socialist, and the last thing I want to see is a veritable repeat of '02 when Jospin was eliminated on the first ballot.

There is no way I'm voting for Sarkozy. Absolutely no way. And I think many on the Left feel the same. The dilemma is whether to vote for Royal at all, knowing that she will be trounced by Sarkozy in a run-off, or vote for M. Bayrou to ensure that someone who can beat Sarkozy is actually present in the run-off. Not an easy election.

[Clements]

As a gambling man and a Brit, I bet my French friends some weeks ago that France will not elect a woman to the Presidency - at least not yet. I won a similar bet some years ago, against Kerry, on the grounds that the President of the US could not have such a thin head. (I'm not kidding). Having followed Segolene with interest, I am confident of not losing. Irrespective of gender or political sympathy, she is no match for Sarkozy.

As others have commented above, I would think the pragmatists of the left must vote for Bayrou to keep out Sarkozy. While neither French nor left myself, and having got my money, I am sure that would be a better result for France.

[Jean-François L.R.]

Most unfortunately, this election turns out to be more about Sarkozy than about France itself.

All things considered, a vote for Royal in the first round may mean a better chance for Sarkozy to make it in the second round.