THE FINAL appeals have been issued, the incessant scroll of opinion polls has gone blank and the eyes of every chancellery in Europe are trained on Paris with one question in mind: is Nicolas Sarkozy, one of most divisive yet compelling figures in the continent’s politics, about to fall?
French voters go to the polls tomorrow in the first round of the presidential election. Sarkozy and François Hollande of the Socialist Party are expected to finish with the highest scores, setting up a head-to-head contest on May 6th that Hollande is the favourite to win. If that were to happen, the low-key, affable 57-year-old who promises a humble, “normal presidency” would become the first left-wing head of state in 17 years.
Sarkozy, the mercurial, unpopular incumbent, needs a historic recovery to avoid becoming only the second French president to be rejected by voters in half a century. On the eve of the election yesterday, he apologised for not showing the “solemnity” befitting a president early in his term. “I need you” has become his rallying cry.
French voters can’t say they don’t have a choice. On the list of 10 candidates is a spectrum that runs from National Front leader Marine Le Pen, who wants referendums on leaving the euro and reinstating the death penalty, to Philippe Poutou, an anti-capitalist factory worker from the southwest who wants banks requisitioned, lay-offs banned and a top tax rate of 100 per cent. “I have no interest in being president,” Poutou concedes.
If there is to be an upset, the most likely to cause it are Le Pen or the left-wing radical Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose fiery, literary speeches calling for “civil insurrection”, have struck a chord, doubled his poll ratings and made him the star of the campaign.