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Two Visions of France

Sarkozy Builds on Lead Over Royal

Nicolas Sarkozy, the front-runner in the French presidential elections, has increased his lead in the opinion polls. Ségolène Royal has just a few hours of campaigning left to persuade France to opt for her vision of the future.

France is entering the last round in the fight for the presidency. Friday is the last day of official campaigning for Sunday's elections, which are widely perceived as a crucial choice not only between left and right but also between two visions of France.

But it may already be too late for Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal to catch up on front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy. Many French voters appear to have already made up their minds about how they will vote on Sunday, with three different opinion polls showing that the right-wing candidate Sarkozy appears to have widened his lead over Royal. The polls indicate that Sarkozy's support is between 53 and 54.5 percent, with Royal predicted to get between 45.5 and 47 percent of the vote.

After holding large rallies on Thursday night, the two candidates are making their final appeals to undecided voters on Friday, with Royal holding two open-air meetings in Brittany, and Sarkozy visiting a war memorial in the French Alps.

A heated televison debate on Wednesday night hasn’t given Royal the necessary push in her campaign, even though she went on the offensive during the TV duel, ditching her softer image to go for the jugular and attacking Sarkozy's record as a member of the government.

Royal has brushed off the latest opinion polls, however. In an interview with Le Parisien published on Friday, she said that "the only thing that matters is the vote by the French people." She has appealed to voters to choose her as the candidate least likely to cause harsh ruptures in French society. She told RTL radio on Friday morning that "The choice of Nicolas Sarkozy is a dangerous choice, I do not want France to be orientated toward a system of brutality." And she told Le Parisien that her rival had the same "neo-conservative ideology" as US President George W. Bush.

Sarkozy's response was to accuse Royal of being "extreme." Speaking on Europe-1 radio on Friday, he said "She is not in a good mood this morning, it must be the polls."

France Needs to Change

What unites these two very different candidates is an agreement that there is an urgent need for change in France -- but while Royal sees the state as the preferred instrument to carry out these changes, Sarkozy is more in favour of market-led reforms.

France has been in decline in recent years, with a lethargic economy, high unemployment -- particularly among young people -- and tensions simmering in the crumbling suburbs. These tensions erupted in 2005 with week-long riots by minority youths, who Sarkozy, then the interior minister, famously referred to as "rabble." This kind of rhetoric hasn’t done Sarkozy much harm, and has probably helped him attract some of those who voted for Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right National Front in 2002.

For Royal, the path to the Élysée Palace is looking increasingly rocky in the light of the latest opinion polls. The TNS-Sofres poll gives Sarkozy 54.5 percent and Royal 45.5 percent, the CSA-Cisco poll gives a narrower gap, with 53 percent saying they intend to vote for the conservative candidate and 47 going for the socialist. Another poll, carried out by Ipsos shows Sarkozy at 54 percent and Royal at 46 percent.

'A Gamble Worth Taking'

Both candidates have courted the centrist politician Francois Bayrou, who won 18 percent of the vote in the first round of elections on April 22. Although he has refused to back either candidate, he did tell Le Monde in an interview on Thursday that "I will not be voting for Sarkozy," saying that he threatens to aggravate the divisions within French society.

Meanwhile, the center-left Le Monde has finally decided to back Royal. In an editorial on Friday, the newspaper's publisher Jean-Marie Colombani wrote that Sarkozy's vision of France is more "American" than Royal's, as he favors those at the top of the social pyramid -- and that his denunciation of the May 1968 generation shows a clear wish for "ideological revenge."

If Royal, were to win, writes Colombani, it would give her the authority to push through change in France, and to reinvent the French left. Voting for Royal, he writes, may be a "gamble" -- but it is one "worth taking."

smd/ap