France’s Nicolas Sarkozy says he will carry out all his major reforms in his first two years in power if elected in May, including streamlining the government into 15 superministries.
A summer session of Parliament would push through tax cuts on income earned through overtime, incentives for home buyers and tougher sentences for repeat offenders, Sarkozy told the Figaro Magazine in an interview released on Thursday.
”In two years we will have to have carried out all the reforms,” Sarkozy, a rightwinger who has led in opinion polls since mid-January, told the weekly magazine.
”Two years to put the reforms into practice, and also to identify and select the people who are going to carry them out,” Sarkozy said.
A law imposing a minimum service in the public sector, notably in transport, would be passed before the end of the year, said Sarkozy. He also repeated his pledge to bring down unemployment to 5% in five years.
Unemployment is currently at a 24-year low of 8,4%, according to state statistics body Insee, although there are questions about the reliability of that figure.
Sarkozy repeated his pledge to have an equal number of men and women in his government. And, while refusing to be drawn on who would be his prime minister, he acknowledged his campaign director Francois Fillon would be qualified for the job.
His government shakeup would include the creation of a Public Accounts Ministry to supervise spending by the state, local government and France’s prized but expensive social security system. A separate Economic Strategy Ministry would prepare France for the challenges posed by globalisation.
The government currently has 30 ministers, not including the prime minister.
Sarkozy again wooed voters tempted by veteran far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, saying they should not be made to feel guilty as they had turned to the National Front out of despair rather than hope.
Brice Hortefeux, a close Sarkozy ally, floated the idea of a limited dose of proportional representation in elections to the National Assembly in 2012 in a separate interview in the Le Figaro daily.
Proportional representation is a key demand of centrist candidate Francois Bayrou but Hortefeux’s suggestion that 60 of the lower house’s 577 seats be filled on a proportional basis could also give seats to the National Front.
At an election rally in the south-western city of Toulouse Sarkozy also courted left-wing voters, hailing historic figures of the French left while branding his Socialist rival Ségolène Royal a conservative who had lost the left’s reformist zeal and abandoned the working classes. – Reuters