THE STARTING gun was fired in France’s presidential election yesterday when an aggressive attack on Nicolas Sarkozy’s record by his socialist rival François Hollande set off a sharp row between the two largest parties.
Accused of running a lacklustre campaign since his selection as the Socialist Party’s candidate last November, Mr Hollande sharpened his rhetoric during a round of new-year appearances. He described Mr Sarkozy as a “president of the privileged” who had run the economy into the ground.
With four months to go before the election, Mr Hollande holds a steady lead over Mr Sarkozy in opinion polls, though the incumbent’s popularity ratings – at record low levels for the past two years – have begun to improve.
In a front-page open letter in the daily Libération, Mr Hollande said the country was angry at having been left "weakened, damaged, degraded" after Mr Sarkozy's five-year term. He said French people felt their republic's values were "hated" and that its social contract was under attack.
The ruling UMP party pounced on what it saw as an insinuation that Mr Sarkozy hated French values. Its senior members then professed alarm after a newspaper claimed Mr Hollande had described Mr Sarkozy to journalists as a “sale mec”, roughly translated as a “nasty piece of work”. “We are all deeply shocked,” said the head of the UMP, Jean-François Copé.
The skirmish was reminiscent of a previous election standoff in 2002 where Socialist contender Lionel Jospin described rival Jacques Chirac as “old and worn out” and was widely felt to have lost support as a result.
Mr Hollande’s campaign team denied the report, and a number of journalists who were present at the off-the-record briefing said his words had been misrepresented.
The row nonetheless ignited an election campaign that promises to be bitter and acrimonious.
Mr Sarkozy is a strong campaigner and a skilled debater, and his supporters hope these strengths, and his handling of the euro zone debt crisis, will allow him to cut his opponent’s lead. The president’s entourage portray Mr Hollande, who has never served in government, as weak and inexperienced. Poking fun at his tendency towards abstract speech, transport minister Thierry Mariani said: “Reading this open letter, you wonder if François Hollande would have done better to write an essay about being and nothingness to start the new year.”
The incumbent is badly weakened, however, by France’s high unemployment, meagre economic growth and disillusionment with his style of government. Socialist leaders say Mr Hollande – an avuncular centrist with a reputation for consensus-building – offers the most attractive alternative.
The contest has become more unpredictable as the field of candidates has grown. National Front leader Marine Le Pen and the centrist François Bayrou have both seen their support rise in recent polls, while the presence of Green candidate Eva Joly and former prime minister Dominique de Villepin on the ballot paper will also chip into the frontrunners’ support.
Mr Sarkozy has not yet formally declared he will stand, and the Socialist Party accuse him of delaying as long as possible so that he can use state funds to campaign across France.
In a sombre New Year’s message that coincided with new figures showing unemployment at a 12-year high, Mr Sarkozy promised “important decisions” on job creation by the end of January. He also hit back at claims that he had gone too far in appeasing financial markets and credit rating agencies to retain France’s triple-A credit rating. “I say this for everyone to hear – neither the markets nor the agencies will decide French policies,” he said.