In a hangar in the south of France, a burst of violins and dramatic drum rolls marked the arrival on stage of France’s most charismatic political showman. At his final gathering before Sunday’s presidential election, the right-wing favourite Nicolas Sarkozy stood surveying his thousands of supporters draped in French football shirts, flags, or face-paint. Some had come to witness what has been likened to a quasi-religious experience, led by a secular evangelist.
“We have two days to liquidate the legacy of May 1968!” Sarkozy boomed, promising an end to the “lax smugness” of the left. “I want to talk about the nation without being called a nationalist,” he vowed, to applause. He name-checked Louis XIV, Napoleon, Clemenceau and General de Gaulle, implying that one day his name would be added to that list. Sweat ran down his face, but in all his star performances he never mops his brow, in case it is seen as a moment of weakness.
Sarkozy (52) now seems unstoppable in his 30-year dream to lead France. More than 100 opinion polls have tipped him to win. Despite his critics’ cries that he is a United States-style neo-conservative, a racist authoritarian, and a volatile power-freak with a complex about his height, who poses on a horse to look like Napoleon charging into battle, Sarkozy is coasting on the highest support of any politician in France for decades.
On Friday, three new polls showed his lead widening to between six to 10 points against his Socialist challenger, Ségolène Royal. The first woman to get this close to becoming president of France says her inspiration is Joan of Arc — on Friday, her supporters whispered that she would need a miracle to win.
For “Sarko l’américain”, who believes in a “French dream” inspired by US-style meritocratic hope — where those who work hard are rewarded, where children sing the anthem with hand on heart and a name like “Schwarzenegger” is no bar to success — it was symbolic that he staged his last rally in Montpellier, known as the “French California”.
The boom town dotted with palm trees is France’s fastest growing city, thanks in part to the controversial local politician Georges Frêche, expelled from the Socialist party for saying there were too many black players in the national football team. Montpellier handed victory to Royal in the first-round vote. But Sarkozy chose it because the surrounding region, struggling with some of the worst unemployment in France, has long been the heartland of the extreme-right Jean-Marie Le Pen.
For years, as Sarkozy has plotted his rise through Jacques Chirac’s party, he has been convinced that France, despite its social model and powerful state, has shifted firmly to the right. Contrary to Chirac, the “weather-vane”, who never proclaimed himself proud to be right, Sarkozy decided long ago that a French election would never again be won on the centre-ground. Unrepentent in his crusade to win over Le Pen’s voters, he has pressed every button, tapped into every far-right instinct, hammering home law and order and promising a “ministry of immigration and national identity”. Le Pen’s vote was decimated and Sarkozy’s vote soared in the south of France. The left called him a populist demagogue, but at the rally, the crowd gave thanks.
“He is the man that killed Le Pen,” said a waiter from Marseille. “He has restored democracy to the south of France.” The crowd in the hangar were the embodiment of Sarkozy’s soundbite: “The France that wakes up early.” Far from the financial market figures who laud his plans to lower tax and loosen labour laws with a mix of interventionist and free-market plans, many came from the working class whose vote he has wrestled from the left and extreme-right. They were attracted by his vow to “respect those who want to work”, rewriting the 35-hour week, and cutting charges on overtime.
“I am Sarkozy’s promise of the self-made man,” said Philippe Mery (51) who ran a second-hand exchange shop called Cash Converter. “He talks about work and merit, those are words that appeal.” Elphie Carrera (27) a nurse, was fed up with a debt-ridden, economically sluggish France moaning that it was in crisis and a perpetual state of malaise.
“The moment a record 85% turned out at the polls for the first-round vote two weeks ago, our crisis subsided,” she said. “Faith was restored in politics.”
Sarkozy’s plane was waiting nearby. In his campaign trips he has only slept away from Paris a couple of nights. He likes to be home at 10pm for his own dawn starts. He is not comfortable among the provincial small-fries of local politics.
A non-drinker, frantic jogger and cyclist, he likes to be photographed in perpetual motion, a model of dynamism, the son of an immigrant — a minor Hungarian aristocrat — who rose through the ranks through his own graft and cunning and not the usual silver spoon. Those in his entourage on plane trips say his conversation revolves more and more around his opinion polls, himself and his personal crusade. His speeches are dotted with so many “I”, “me” and “I want” that some news weeklies have begun to tally them up.
At Royal’s final big stadium meeting in Paris earlier this week, the mood among the crowd was “TSS”, “tout sauf Sarko”, or anyone but Sarkozy. The gig was like a bank-holiday rock festival, but with the feeling that it was the last time for the ska bands, the actors, academics, comedians, sportsmen who have rallied to Royal to head off the bogeyman at the door. Posters showed Sarkozy with bloodied fangs, a divisive authoritarian who would rip apart social fabric.
For the left, the last day of the French presidential campaign is more than ever a referendum on Sarkozy’s personality — a former interior minister, who has been in ruling government for years but has reinvented himself as a type of opposition leader.
“He pits people against each other, he stigmatises French people of foreign origin,” said Elyane Barras, a retired administrator. “There will be riots again on the estates,” said Sorraya Baiddou, a student from the suburbs.
Royal was presenting as the voice of “justice” against Sarkozy’s “brutality”. But behind the cheers there was a sense of unease and frustration about the Socialist party itself and how it had run its campaign. How, after the disaster of being knocked out by Le Pen in 2002, after 12 years of Chirac, after riots that shook the housing estates, could the left lose again?
Royal, an outsider who had a surprise meteoric rise to become the party’s candidate last year, has never managed to unite a fractured party behind her. By contrast, Sarkozy has spent years building a base in the party he leads.
Some felt there was still a hope of a last-minute anti-Sarkozy rush. “She’s not the ideal woman for the job, but between a cold and cholera, I’d choose a cold,” said one voter from Paris. – Guardian Unlimited Â