PRESIDENT Chirac's first campaign appeal since announcing a snap general election for May 25th badly misfired yesterday as newspapers throughout the country criticised his communications advisers, headed by his daughter, Ms Claude Chirac.
The President, who is not directly involved in the two round poll, released a five page type written appeal for a personal vote of confidence to 14 carefully selected provincial newspapers in a move described by the editor of one daily as rather third worldish".
But the scornful remarks by Hubert Coudurier of the Telegramme de Bres were mild compared to the attack by Jacques Camus, chairman of La Republique di Centre. Echoing a storm of protest from other provincial publishers, Mr Camus blamed the "Elysee communications gurus" without mentioning Ms Claude Chirac by name. "Only a Parisian elite could believe that the variety of opinions in the press could be summed up by a few papers with big circulations," he said.
Le Monde ridiculed both method and content, comparing the President's article to an annual family letter in which the news was always the same ... times are hard, problems are caused by other people, the neighbours are behaving badly, tomorrow may be better but only if everybody lends a hand.
Mr Chirac, whose daughter is his favourite media adviser, intervened on the second anniversary of his election because of poor opinion polls. They show that the ruling Gaullist led coalition could lose power after the second round on June 1st. A survey in Le Parisien yesterday said the potential left wing vote had risen by three points to 40 per cent in two weeks while government support had dropped from 43 per cent to 40.5 per cent.
But the President's decision to issue a solemn article that did not even mention his Prime Minister, Mr Alain Juppe, lost the goodwill of a large section of the press. All the national papers ignored an embargo and published the text in full after receiving leaks from their sister papers. The text left no doubt that Mr Chirac saw his own future at stake. After calling for new enthusiasm to accelerate economic and social reforms, while criticising socialist methods, he underlined his personal involvement by repeatedly using the first person.
"I need your support to pursue the work we have started and which can only be fruitful in the long term," he wrote. "With shared elan, let us seize our chance."
But the stilted appeal, which went no further than the president's justification a fortnight ago for an election a year before the due date, was a gift to the opposition Left. The Socialist leader, Mr Lionel Jospin, dismissed the article as "super Juppe" - a reference to the Prime Minister's main fault, an inability to communicate his enthusiasm to a hostile electorate.