Nicolas Sarkozy’s portrayal as a dangerous right-winger who scares voters dominated France’s presidential campaign on Wednesday, forcing the front-runner on to the defensive just four days before first-round polling.
”The worrying Mr Sarkozy” headlined the left-wing daily Liberation over a story that said aides to the former interior minister were also concerned by his inability to soften his hard-line image and broaden his appeal to moderate voters.
Sarkozy’s closest rivals, Socialist Ségolène Royal and third-placed centrist Francois Bayrou, are concentrating their fire on his character, seeking to make the vote a referendum on his personality as much as his policies.
Portraying him as an agitated, dangerous rightwinger, they say his inability to visit France’s multi-ethnic suburbs without a small army of riot police shows he is incapable of being the unifying force a president is supposed to be.
A week of sharp exchanges with far-right leader Jean-Marie le Pen, who saw in Sarkozy’s talk on immigration, crime and national identity a bid to steal his voters, also harmed his efforts to rebrand himself as a milder, more open character.
”I’m attacked morning, noon and night and with such violence,” Sarkozy told France Inter radio. ”I’m trying to tell the French people I will unite them, and to do that I have to love them, understand them, listen to them. That’s what I’ll do in the second round, if I make it.”
The run-off vote is scheduled for May 6.
‘Supermarket proletariat’
Launched in January, ”Sarkozy Mark II” curbed his naturally waspish tongue, softened his body language and tone and adopted Royal’s buzz words of respect, confidence and debate in what some language experts saw as an attempt to ”Ségolenise” himself.
A Reuters poll of economists showed his policies were most likely to boost growth, but a CSA survey on Tuesday showed him tied with Royal, suggesting Sarkozy had yet to convince voters that his rule would be more restrained than his rhetoric.
Royal too has switched tactics, wooing waverers with daily policy announcements in a bid to ensure no repeat of 2002, when Le Pen knocked out the Socialist candidate in the first round.
In a Paris supermarket, she courted the female workforce — ”today’s proletariat” — and demanded stores create rather than cut jobs when they are making vast profits.
”Qualifying for the second round will be a first victory and will lead to a second on May 6,” her partner and Socialist Party boss Francois Hollande said.
Centrist Bayrou, meanwhile, continued to talk up his hopes of making the run-off and mocked Sarkozy’s recent visit to a French suburb, saying there were 326 police on duty for a meeting with 100 residents of a poor estate in case of unrest.
”How can one govern a country when one has raised tensions between people to that extent?” he said on RTL radio.
Posters of Sarkozy have been systematically defaced across France, while the image of most of the other 11 candidates contesting the April 22 first-round ballot are mostly unscathed.
Underlining public interest in Sarkozy’s character, the news magazine Marianne ran an edition this week entitled ”The Real Sarkozy: What the Major Media Dare Not, or Do Not Want to Reveal”, featuring a lengthy attack on his alleged excesses.
The weekly said the 300 000 print run sold out in 48 hours. — Reuters