FRANCE:Ten of the 12 French presidential candidates will be eliminated after tomorrow's first round of voting, and a new campaign will begin in earnest on Monday, writes Lara Marlowe
In the run-up to tomorrow's first round of the French presidential election, the leading candidates harked back to their political origins. Nicolas Sarkozy, the right-wing candidate, made a pilgrimage to Gen Charles de Gaulle's tomb at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, where he praised "an epoch when France did not doubt herself".
At a rally in Nantes, the socialist Ségolène Royal sounded like a medium conjuring up the spirit of the late president Francois Mitterrand when she declared: "The tranquil force is there, before you." La force tranquille was Mitterrand's slogan when he seized the presidency in 1981.
More than a return to their respective roots, the de Gaulle and Mitterrand allusions seemed a grasping for bearings at the end of a disorienting campaign.
The three leading candidates stole each others' ideas, agreeing on equality for women, global warming, the immorality of "golden parachutes" for failed business executives, the need to stop cronyism and raise old-age pensions. Ideological differences surfaced on taxation, criminal law and civil service reform.
Much of the campaign was downright weird. How else can one describe the confessional tone of Sarkozy's "I have changed" speech at his mega-rally in January? Or Sarkozy's apparent immunity from normal standards of reprobation: neither his misuse of the domestic intelligence service to investigate one of Royal's advisers, nor a very dubious property deal, nor repeated threats against journalists, dented his popularity.
As interior minister, Sarkozy was supposed to be in charge of anti-terrorism.
Yet he was unable to say whether Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were Sunni or Shia Muslims, and referred to the main families of Islam as "ethnic groups".
In a controversial interview with Philosophie magazine, Sarkozy said he believed that people are born paedophiles or prone to suicide. As Royal observed on RTL radio this week, if she had said something so idiotic, she would no longer be a candidate.
When Royal makes a gaffe, she usually sticks to it. She has maintained her plan for "citizens' juries" to supervise politicians, and still insists she would not allow Iran to have even a civil nuclear power programme.
This week, Royal cancelled interviews with two leading French newspapers and each day delivered a 15-minute thematic "declaration", where journalists were not allowed to ask questions. On Monday, she promised to make the fight against sexual crime a "national cause". On Tuesday, she swore she'd cut costs at the Élysée to end the "monarchical drift" of the presidency.
Wednesday's session was devoted to the fate of women cashiers in supermarkets, Thursday's to "the impartial state."
As usual, the most outrageous statements were made by the extreme right-wing candidate, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
He said teenagers should be encouraged to masturbate rather than be given free condoms. And he claimed that Sarkozy wasn't fit to become president of France, because three of his grandparents were foreign.
The campaign has focused on personalities, not issues. Writing in Le Monde, the Irish-American author Douglas Kennedy called Royal and Sarkozy "Bambi and the Big Bad Wolf." Though Sarkozy leads opinion polls, he also inspires fear.
In the last stage of the campaign, Royal has capitalised on this, frequently referring to Sarkozy's "brutality" compared to her own "serenity".
Every morning, UMP staff replace Sarkozy posters defaced by Hitler moustaches and vampire teeth.
The news magazine Mariannepublished a cover story on "The True Sarkozy" which warned: "There is something mad about this man! The very nature of his madness is that which has fuelled aspiring dictators." The 300,000 print-run sold out within eight hours.
The dilemma of French voters was summed up by a retired medical doctor and longtime socialist sympathiser as: "Sarkozy's mad, and Ségolène is silly. So who does one vote for? Bayrou."
In late February, the centrist candidate Francois Bayrou seemed to come out of nowhere to challenge "Sarko-Ségo" in the opinion polls, at times tying with Royal for second place. More than 90 per cent of respondents in a poll in February found him sympathique, compared to 81 per cent for Royal and 68 per cent for Sarkozy.
For the past three weeks, all polls have placed the candidates in the same order: Sarkozy, Royal, Bayrou, Le Pen. Yet a surprise is within the margin of error and the main uncertainty of tomorrow's vote is whether Bayrou - or even Le Pen - could beat Royal to the run-off.
In the last two presidential elections, opinion polls spectacularly failed to predict the results of the first round.
On Thursday, a BVA poll for regional newspapers showed Sarkozy and Royal increasing their lead over other candidates. The same day, another poll for Le Figaro showed the opposite.
The L'Yonne Républicainenewspaper denounced poll mania (by some counts there have been 300 this year) as a "farcical masquerade" that has left the country "floundering in nonsense".
The stakes are highest for the socialists; if their candidate does not qualify for the run-off, for the second successive election, the party could disintegrate. In a broader sense, the winner of the May 6th run-off urgently needs to restore the country's confidence in its political class.
A study by the CEVIPOF political research centre last month shows that 61 per cent of the French trust neither right nor left to govern. With 10 of 12 candidates to be eliminated tomorrow night, the presidential race may gain in clarity. We should see a televised debate between two survivors. A whole new campaign is about to start.