FRANCE:Voters are still on the fence in the final stages of the election, writes Lara Marlowein Paris
Eleven days before the first round of the French presidential election, four in 10 voters are still undecided, and there are no clearly debated issues.
"No candidate has managed to impose a theme for more than 48 hours," observes Jean-Louis Bianco, campaign director for the socialist candidate Ségolène Royal.
The right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy tends to dominate proceedings, though often in a negative way. Mr Sarkozy has led every opinion poll this year, except those postulating a run-off against the centrist Francois Bayrou. In a poll published by Le Parisien yesterday, Mr Sarkozy outrated his rivals, by a wide margin, for solidity, precision, modernity, new ideas and credibility.
Yet Mr Sarkozy inspires visceral rejection among the 52 per cent of French people who say they do not want to see him become president of France. They include the approximately 150 residents of the Croix-Rousse neighbourhood in Lyon who sabotaged the candidate's visit a few days ago.
The right-wing candidate is a self-avowed chocoholic, and had scheduled a visit to the Bouillet sweet and pastry shop. But the locals, alerted by mobile text messages, gathered outside with placards saying "Sarko, you're not welcome," and "Charters for Sarko" (an allusion to the former interior minister's penchant for deporting illegal immigrants).
Rather than face the demonstrators, Mr Sarkozy skipped the stop, telling journalists his plane had landed 45 minutes late. By evening, he lie was proven: the privately contracted Falcon 900 that brought Mr Sarkozy from Paris landed two minutes early.
On the same day, the extreme right-wing, anti-immigration candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen embarrassed Mr Sarkozy by venturing into Argenteuil, the immigrant suburb of Paris where Sarkozy enraged black and Arab youths by calling delinquents racaille (scum) in October 2005.
Mr Sarkozy promised to return to Argenteuil during the campaign, but somehow never found the time.
Mr Le Pen visited in early morning, when the racaille could safely be assumed to be sleeping. Referring to Mr Sarkozy's promise to clean up the suburbs, Mr Le Pen said: "If some want to wash you with a power hose to exclude you, we want to help you get out of these suburban ghettos where French politicians have dumped you, only to call you scum."
Messers Le Pen and Sarkozy are engaged in a strange courtship, exchanging insults and winks, both trying to bite into the other's electorate. Opinion polls credit Mr Le Pen with 12 to 14 per cent of the vote in the first round, but a report commissioned by Mr Sarkozy predicted 18 per cent. Mr Le Pen swears he'll pass the 20 per cent mark, and has reserved 500 tonnes of paper to print posters on the night of April 22nd if he makes it to the run-off.
"Ideological victory always preceeds political victory," notes Mr Le Pen's daughter and political heir Marine. "Look: our ideas are everywhere. All the candidates criticise Europe, talk about immigration, law and order, and are singing the Marseillaise." In an interview on Easter Sunday, Mr Le Pen called Mr Sarkozy "a candidate who comes from immigration" whereas he was "a candidate from the (French) land". (Mr Sarkozy's father immigrated from Hungary.) "France could have done without Nicolas Sarkozy, who might have made a beautiful career in Hungary," Mr Le Pen added.
The left immediately condemned Mr Le Pen's remarks, but Mr Sarkozy's camp welcomed the chance to put some distance between their candidate and the extreme right. "Jean-Marie Le Pen said there was a difference between him and me. He's right; we are different, I should say very different," Mr Sarkozy said.
Mr Sarkozy's statement in an interview with Philosophie Magazine that people are genetically pre-disposed to paedophilia and suicide has been widely condemned by Mr Bayrou, the archbishop of Paris and the medical and scientific community.
The socialist candidate Ségolène Royal engaged in her only head-on clash with Mr Sarkozy after rioting at the Gare du Nord at the end of March. Mr Sarkozy claimed she'd called him "ignoble" for proposing a ministry of immigration and national identity, and accused her of siding with fare evaders and looters. She called him a liar, then promised to stop name-calling.
Ms Royal's new proposals keep getting shot down. Most recently, she accused French banks of "ripping off" clients and promised to limit fees and put a cap on overdraft penalties. The right gleefully pointed out that a law to this effect was passed in February.