2012 French Presidential Elections

pmaitra

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2012 French Presidential Elections



This thread is about news, articles, analyses and discussion about the French Presidential Elections of 2012.
 

pmaitra

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Nicolas Sarkozy styles himself as man of the people

Nicolas Sarkozy styles himself as man of the people

Thursday 01 March 2012 | Telegraph UK

Nicolas Sarkozy styled himself as the candidate of the people yesterday as he told 12,000 supporters he kept France strong by averting economic "catastrophe", at his first major rally.



His rivals are hammering him over his support for referenda on 'technical' issues but not on giving the EU power to strike down the French budget.

The conservative president-candidate confirmed that if re-elected he has no intention of holding a national referendum on the new European Union treaty on budget stability and economic governance.
The fiscal compact will impose quasi-automatic sanctions on countries that breach EU budget deficit limits and enshrine budget rules in national law.

Sarko said it would be difficult to put the EU fiscal compact to a public vote as"If we're dealing with a treaty with 200 articles, 250 articles, I can't see how you'd formulate a clear question".

A referendum would only be effective on a clearer cut issue, like a nation's membership of the euro, he argued.

The problem is Sarkozy's refusal smacks of hypocrisy as he kicked off his re-election campaign by promising to consult the people whenever necessary on policy via referendums – all part of his "power to the people" bid as he tries to cut the grass from under the National Front.

Sarkozy had historically been allergic to referendums since he lost one as interior minister on Corsican autonomy and then backed the European constitutional treaty in 2005 only to see France vote firmly "non".

But his ex-far-Right adviser, Patrick Buisson, convinced him to embrace them anew in this campaign to win back the FN electorate he siphoned off in 2007 but who are now backing Le Pen.

Today's statement has quite rightly seen him accused of double speak.

Jérome Cahuzac, from Socialist François Hollande's camp, pointed out that Sarkozy is "prepared to consult the people on whether judicial or administrative tribunals should both be involved in expelling foreigners. Thus he wants to consult the French on a very technical subject.

"But on a subject as political as European treaties, on abandoning sovereignty, budgetary oversight, austerity, sanctions in the case of a country not respecting that austerity...on such major issues he hesitates to consult the people. It says a lot about his sincerity".
Hollande has let it be known he wants to renegotiate the eurozone fiscal treaty to include a clause on growth measures. But Hollande too has ruled for now the idea of a referendum.

"We are not going to hold a referendum on a treaty that does not mark a real break, as was the case with the Maastricht treaty," Hollande said earlier this month.

Those to his Left and Right are furious.

"The masks fall on the European question!" wrote Pierre Laurent, Communist with Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Front de Gauche, who voted no in 2005 and wants a referendum on the new treaty. "When it comes to serious matters that involve the national constitution, Nicolas Sarkozy rules out consulting the French."

National Front leader Marine Le Pen described the announcement as proof of "great disdain for the French people, judged incapable of expressing themselves on too complicated a subject."

"Let's not forget that in 2005, the French expressed themselves with great clarity on a treaty with 448 articles," remarked Le Pen.
In the same vein, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Gaullist-sovereignist candidate for his Debout La République party, said Sarko's refusal was proof he was champion of "the art of the simplified coup d'Etat".

"To be the people's candidate means having sufficient trust in the French people to let them be masters of the choices that will rule the destiny of the country."

This could well be a decision that comes back to haunt Sarkozy.

Source: France election 2012: Nicolas Sarkozy's EU fiscal pact referendum copout - Telegraph
 

methos

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Sakrozy will win so he and Merkel can be Merkozy...
 

addiction

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It will hardly make any difference to outsiders as all parties in france ve the same agenda and i.e. France!
 

Armand2REP

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Sarkozy Widens Poll Lead

By GABRIELE PARUSSINI

PARIS—French President Nicolas Sarkozy has widened his lead over Socialist challenger François Hollande in polls ahead of next month's first round of voting, continuing his marked recovery from the lowest popularity rating for an incumbent president since World War II.

Mr. Sarkozy overtook Mr. Hollande for the first time two weeks ago, and his lead has grown ever since. A survey released on Thursday by polling firm CSA showed 30% of potential voters would vote for Mr. Sarkozy for a second five-year term, if elections were held now, while 26% would pick the Socialist candidate. The poll was conducted on Monday and Tuesday. The pollster's previous survey, one week ago, put the two presidential front runners neck and neck, at 28%, far ahead of the other eight candidates.

While no margin of error was given, it is generally 3% in polls of this size.

Mr. Sarkozy has clearly benefited in opinion polls from his highly visible presence in the handling of the security crisis that culminated with the killing of suspected killer and self-proclaimed al Qaeda activist Mohamed Merah by police last week.

Because of his role of president, Mr. Sarkozy has appeared frequently on national television, unlike other presidential hopefuls, who are subjected to strict media rules. French radio and television stations are obliged to devote an equal amount of time to each candidate in the monthlong period that precedes the first round of voting, scheduled for April 22.

The other candidate who seemed to have benefited most from the fallout from the Toulouse shootings is far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who rose to 15% from 13.5% a week ago, the CSA poll showed, while centrist candidate François Bayrou and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon both lost 0.5 percentage point to 12.5%. In her election meetings, Ms. Le Pen has been leading a charge against immigration, forcing the incumbent president to toughen his tone to stem voter migration to the more extreme National Front.

Mr. Sarkozy had already hardened his stance on immigration, saying in March that the country's attempts to integrate foreigners into its culture and society were failing, as he defended a re-election campaign promising to cut the number of new arrivals in half. Twice this week, he said that—if re-elected—he will quell immigration.

"Several candidates on the right side of the spectrum—including Dominique de Villepin and Christine Boutin—have withdrawn, while many are still running on the left," said Bernard Cazeneuve, a spokesman for Mr. Hollande. "It's only natural that Mr. Sarkozy goes up in polls."

Mr. Sarkozy has also tried to reach voters on a more personal level, pledging a more sober five-year stint if he gets a second mandate.

"I will be different," Mr. Sarkozy said in an interview with French magazine Paris Match, echoing similar comments made ahead of the 2007 election to reassure French voters about his hyperkinetic personality. "First of all, because I will have already been president for five years"¦and then, because I'm five years older. Inevitably, one gets calmer."

Mr. Hollande still holds a lead in polls tracking an expected second-round runoff with Mr. Sarkozy, though the gap is narrowing. In the expected runoff between the two leading candidates, which would be held on May 6 if no candidate secures 50% or more of votes in the first round, Mr. Hollande would win 53% to 47%, CSA said.

The six-percentage-point lead was the thinnest since CSA started its series of polls leading up to the elections, and only a fraction of the 14-point gap observed in February, CSA said.

The sample of 876 people aged 18 and above and registered to vote surveyed by CSA confirmed that economic and budgetary issues loom large in the election. The three top concerns of French voters are employment, purchasing power and pensions, three themes that have lately disappeared from the debates.

Sarkozy Widens Poll Lead - WSJ.com
 

pmaitra

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So the recent hunting down of the French-Moroccan Jihadi acted a coup for Sarkozy, or not?
 

Armand2REP

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His crack down on Islamics looks far more presidential than the meek M. Hollande. He is the crisis candidate.
 

Armand2REP

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Melenchon is taking Hollande votes but it won't be enough to unseat him in a runoff. It does reflect the left's uncertainty about the Socialist candidate and may translate to weak support during the runoff election. Sarkozy's only hope is to pull the same far-right swing he got in the last election. The polls are narrowing.
 

ejazr

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Sarkozy's chances fade two days before French runoff

Sarkozy’s chances fade two days before French runoff | Firstpost

PARIS (Reuters) – President Nicolas Sarkozy's chances of holding on to power were fading two days before France's election runoff, with far-right and centrist leaders refusing to endorse him and his usually bland Socialist rival performing confidently in a TV debate.

Opinion polls suggested Sarkozy could squeeze Socialist challenger Francois Hollande's lead down to around five percentage points from as much as 10 in the last few days.

However, centrist Francois Bayrou effectively buried one of Sarkozy's last hopes of hauling himself higher on Sunday. Bayrou, who came fifth in last month's first round with 9 percent, said he would vote for Hollande on Sunday and left his supporters to make up their own minds.

Bayrou attacked Sarkozy's use of tough language on immigration and Europe, aimed at winning over the nearly one in five voters who picked far-right leader Marine Le Pen in round one – an effort which the National Front leader snubbed this week by also refusing to endorse the incumbent.

Two opinion polls – the first conducted since Wednesday evening's television debate – found Sarkozy making up ground against Hollande. Nevertheless, even the challenger's reduced lead would be tough to overcome so close to the vote.

A CSA survey found Hollande's lead falling from eight points to six after the debate, with 53 percent support to Sarkozy's 47 percent. Pollster Harris Interactive reported the same levels of support while an OpinionWay poll conducted half before and half after the debate gave Hollande his smallest margin yet of five points.

Having lagged the blander but more popular Hollande for weeks now in polls, Sarkozy's best hopes of clinching a second term hinged on winning the support of around 80 percent of Le Pen's voters for Sunday and at least half of Bayrou's.

Bayrou objected to Sarkozy's move to the right. "The line Nicolas Sarkozy chose between the two rounds is violent. It contradicts our values," Bayrou said, explaining his decision to reject the incumbent who is closer to him politically than Hollande.

Compounding a black week for the president, Sarkozy came across as agitated and tense in the nearly three-hour debate and he failed to land a knockout blow on Hollande, who was poised and confident.

Several surveys of people who watched the debate found that most felt Hollande was more convincing than Sarkozy.

Even Alain Minc, a political consultant who is one of Sarkozy's closest friends and advisers, admitted Hollande had outperformed him in the debate, watched by more than a third of the electorate.

"I think we all underestimated this guy. He's shown quite an uncommon strength of spirit this year," Minc told Reuters. "The Francois Hollande we are seeing today is different from the one we all knew. We took him for something other than he is. Either we were wrong or he has changed."

In polls only 3 percent said the debate had changed their voting plans.

BRASH AND SHOWY

Sarkozy has fought an uphill battle for re-election as economic gloom, his failure to keep a 2007 promise to cut unemployment to 5 percent, and a dislike of his brash and showy manner have turned many former supporters against him.

The rivals held their last big meetings on Thursday.

In the southern city of Toulon, Sarkozy implored voters not to elect what would be the first left-wing president in 17 years while, further west in Toulouse, Hollande supporters cheered Bayrou's decision to vote for their candidate.

At least one more poll was due to land on Friday, the last day of official campaigning before a blackout from midnight.

Voting booths open at 8 a.m. (0600 GMT) on Sunday and close either at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT) or two hours later in big cities.

Reliable projections of the result based on a partial vote count will be published once the last polling stations close.

The runoff coincides with parliamentary elections in Greece, where voters are set to punish mainstream parties for imposing austerity, and a week before a German regional election when Chancellor Angela Merkel may suffer a mid-term rebuff to her strict austerity policies.

For French voters, the economic crisis, Europe's debt woes and pressure on household incomes have been the overriding issues, driving the wave of support for Le Pen's National Front.

"It's the people who are really struggling financially who vote for Le Pen," said Dominique Reynie, a professor at Sciences Po University and head of the liberal think tank Fondapol.

"For the runoff, people voting for Sarkozy are thinking about somebody who can lead in Europe and handle the crisis. Those who vote for Hollande are thinking about their own purchasing power and social well-being."
 

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Francois Hollande set to beat Nicolas Sarkozy

PARIS: The French turned out Sunday for a vote tipped to make Nicolas Sarkozy the latest European leader ousted by economic crisis and Francois Hollande the country's first Socialist president in nearly two decades.

The last opinion polls published put Hollande ahead -- but with Sarkozy narrowing the gap slightly in the closing straight -- as voters punish the right-wing incumbent for failing to slash stubbornly high unemployment. Victory for Hollande would mean a shift in direction for the European Union as the Socialist has promised to renegotiate the bloc's fiscal pact -- which he accuses of stifling economies -- to make it focus more on growth.

Dark grey skies and rain showers greeted voters across much of France, but turnout was high by recent standards in a highly political country today split roughly 50-50 between left-leaning and right-leaning camps. Hollande voted early in his adopted hometown Tulle, in the rural backwoods of the central Correze region, accompanied by girlfriend Valerie Trierweiler and welcomed by a crowd of supporters and journalists from around the globe.

"It's going to be a long day," he said. "I don't know if it's going to be a good day -- that's for the French to decide -- but for a portion of them it will obviously be a good day, and not for the others."

Sarkozy and his former supermodel wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy voted at a high school in Paris' chic 16th district followed by a dense pack of photographers and acclaimed by a well-heeled crowd gathered behind street barriers. The Socialists were setting up a stage on Place de la Bastille in Paris, where Francois Mitterrand came to give a victory speech when he was elected president in 1981.

On Place de la Concorde, where Sarkozy delivered a speech after winning the 2007 election, a few television crews were in place but there was no sign of a stage being built.

More than 46 million voters were eligible to take part, and around 80 percent of them were expected to do so. Polling was to close at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) and an estimated result was to be given immediately afterwards. Turnout was high but not at record levels with three hours to go before all voting stations shut, hitting 71.96 percent at 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) according to interior ministry figures.

The French vote coincides with an election in Greece, where voters were also predicted to punish the incumbent parties for landing the country in its bleak economic state. Anger over sputtering economies has brought down leaders from Ireland to Portugal since the debt crisis washed over the European continent.

Hollande campaigned as a consensus-building moderate focused on restoring economic growth and is seen as on course to become France's first Socialist president since Mitterrand left office in 1995. Sarkozy has trailed consistently in opinion polls for the last six months, but fought a bruising campaign focused on mobilising voters fearful that immigration and globalisation threaten the French way of life.

Final opinion polls conducted on Friday before campaigning was officially suspended for the weekend suggested the still energetic Sarkozy may have closed the gap on the frontrunner to as little as four per cent. But a complete turnaround would still constitute a surprise, and Hollande was expected to assume the leadership of France, the eurozone's second-largest economy and a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council.

Even before polls opened on the mainland, more than a million had voted in overseas territories and consulates in foreign cities with a large French expatriate population, with turnout slightly higher than in the first round.

France has a strict ban on publishing result estimates until all polls close, but foreign media websites are expected to publish estimates before then, and these will spread quickly via Twitter and Facebook.

Anyone breaking the law on sharing early estimates faces a fine of 75,000 euros (100,000 dollars), but French citizens got around the restriction in the first round by using code words and the Twitter hashtag #RadioLondres.

Hollande won the first round with 28.63 per cent of the votes to Sarkozy's 27.18 per cent, and the candidates -- who are both aged 57 -- have been fighting for the votes of those whose candidates failed to make the run-off. Far-right anti-immigrant candidate Marine Le Pen, who won almost 18 percent in the first round, said she had cast a blank ballot, and observers expected many of her supporters to do the same.

"The two remaining candidates are political Siamese twins, so I'm not expecting very much from the result," she said after voting in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, where she is a regional councillor.

The polling institute Ifop, however, forecasts that 55 per cent of her voters would back Sarkozy and 19 percent Hollande. Hollande needs a strong mandate to implement his programme to counter EU-driven austerity, while Sarkozy has played on fears that the election of a Socialist would send shudders through the EU and the financial markets.

Whoever wins will next have to build a parliamentary majority after June's legislative elections, but the formal handover of presidential power is expected on or around May 15 -- in any case before May 17.
French presidential polls: Francois Hollande set to beat Nicolas Sarkozy - The Times of India
 

Razor

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Socialist Francois Hollande wins French presidency

He got about 52% of votes in Sunday's run-off, according to early projections, against 48% for centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Sarkozy has admitted defeat, saying: "Francois Hollande is the president of France and he must be respected."

Source:

BBC News - Socialist Francois Hollande wins French presidency
 

nrj

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Mr Sarkozy has admitted defeat, saying: "Francois Hollande is the president of France and he must be respected."
So it finally happened, fall from the grace !
 

Ray

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They will be more independent of US.

Would that be good in today's churn?
 

Sakal Gharelu Ustad

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They will be more independent of US.

Would that be good in today's churn?
French atleast try to look independent. Hollande's win would have small impact on US-France relationship.

But I can see turbulent times ahead for the Eurozone. Merkel's open endorsement of Sarkozy was the biggest blunder for Eurozone politics.
 

Yusuf

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When in doubt run to socialists :(

I wonder of France has made the right choice.
 

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