France’s right-wing presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy was embroiled in a free-speech row on Friday after a defeated candidate accused him of stifling a televised election debate.
Francois Bayrou said Sarkozy had subverted basic democratic freedoms of free speech by using his media and business contacts to pull the plug on Saturday’s scheduled debate on Canal+ television between him and Socialist challenger Ségolène Royal.
Sarkozy’s campaign director, Claude Gueant, said the accusations were a baseless slander and denounced what he said were ”Stalinist tactics” by the centrist Bayrou.
Bayrou’s strong third place in Sunday’s first-round ballot has sparked a scramble to win over his almost seven million voters, and Royal proposed a debate to assess possible points of convergence with the leader of the small centrist UDF party.
Asked on RTL radio if he was accusing Sarkozy of asking Canal+ television to cancel the debate, Bayrou said: ”I don’t have the proof but I am certain of it.”
Bayrou said he based his accusations on testimony from people inside Canal+ and ”all those who were interested in the debate and intended to broadcast it”.
”I say with certainty that we have before our eyes today the proof of this propensity or choice of Nicolas Sarkozy to control the news and debate, and this is harmful for France,” he said.
Bayrou’s accusations could scare off moderate voters drawn to Sarkozy’s energy and drive but worried by the former interior minister’s strident image and hard-line views on crime, immigration and national identity.
Sarkozy’s camp, already stung by Bayrou’s sustained attack on their candidate in a Wednesday news conference, responded angrily to the centrist’s latest salvo.
”It’s slander, a slanderous insinuation,” said Sarkozy’s normally restrained campaign director, Gueant.
”It is extremely serious to make such remarks. These are Stalinist tactics. To assert things without proof is extremely serious,” he told Reuters.
Sarkozy censorship?
Since his strong showing on Sunday Bayrou has sought to impose himself as a power-broker in the presidential elections and parliamentary polls due in June. Polls give Sarkozy the edge over Royal but she has narrowed the gap in recent surveys.
A TNS Sofres poll this week showed 46% of Bayrou’s voters support Royal, against 25% for Sarkozy and 29% who have yet to make up their minds, although other polls have showed support roughly evenly split.
Bayrou has so far ruled out endorsing either candidate, but his criticism of Royal’s economic programme was soft compared to his withering attacks on Sarkozy.
”I am not here to say how I am going to vote. I said that I would do so, if I had to, later,” Bayrou said on RTL.
The row began when on Thursday Canal+ pulled out of a plan to broadcast the Royal-Bayrou debate, citing election rules governing equal airtime for candidates ahead of a May 6 run-off between Royal and Sarkozy.
The CSA broadcasting watchdog issued a statement denying it had ordered Canal+ and two other broadcasters to drop the debate, sparking cries of foul play from the Socialist camp.
”There is Sarkozy censorship in this affair, I’m deeply convinced of it. We know that Sarkozy always operates like that, through intimidation,” senior Socialist Jean-Marc Ayrault said on LCI television.
Around half of the deputies from Bayrou’s UDF party have rallied to Sarkozy’s cause, but Ayrault said that was because Sarkozy’s UMP party had threatened to run candidates against them in June parliamentary polls unless they backed the UMP leader. — Reuters