With fewer than two weeks to go before the French presidential elections, what might a Sarkozy victory mean for France's immigrant communities, asks David Tresilian in Paris With campaigning now reaching a peak before the first round of the French presidential elections on 22 April -- to be followed if need be by a second round on 6 May -- French commentators are agreed that these are the most important elections to be held in France in years, with the country apparently coming up to an important crossroads. While there are 12 candidates contesting the elections, ranging from the extreme right to the extreme left and featuring evergreens of French political life such as Arlette Laguiller of the left-wing Lutte ouvrière, who has contested every presidential election since 1974, and Jean-Marie Le Pen, the extreme-right National Front candidate, who has a similar pedigree, as the campaign heats up France's voters are being presented with a choice between two, or perhaps three, main candidates. On the one hand, they can vote for the Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal, the first woman to stand a real chance of winning a major French election. She is a politician who has been careful to distance herself from the unpopular, and largely male, "dinosaurs" of the French Socialist Party, choosing instead what she calls a new way of doing politics that is closer to people's everyday concerns. On the other, they can choose to head into what for France are largely uncharted waters by voting for the centre-right UMP candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, who has similarly distanced himself from the kind of politics-as-usual represented by the outgoing French President Jacques Chirac, himself from the UMP. Sarkozy has caused disquiet among many voters by provocative statements he has made about the need to shake up French life and politics. A third possibility is a vote for François Bayrou, a former education minister and candidate of the centre-right UDF Party, who has positioned himself as a "middle-way" candidate between what he alleges are the ideological extremes represented by the two main candidates. There is also the National Front's Le Pen, that startled France, and alarmed international opinion, by pushing the then Socialist Party candidate, Lionel Jospin, out of the running in the first round of the last French presidential elections in 2002, going on to stand in the run-off against Chirac. However, assuming that there are no major upsets this time round at the polls in two weeks time, either Sarkozy or Royal will be the next president of France. While Sarkozy has been consistently ahead in the polls throughout the campaign, one poll in last weekend's mass- circulation newspaper Le Parisien indicated that 59 per cent of people thought he would be France's next president, as against only 18 per cent for Royal, the latter is thought more likely to appeal to France's youth vote and to voters from the country's various immigrant communities. With fewer than two weeks to go before the first round of voting, there are still many imponderables in the campaign, with depression in the Socialist Party at Sarkozy's apparently irresistible rise tempered by the success of "get-out-the-vote" campaigns launched among young people and French citizens of foreign origin, many of whom are thought to be natural Royal voters. There has been almost unprecedented interest in the outcome of this election, an indication that many voters see it as a kind of turning point for France, with some two million new voters adding their names to the electoral rolls. This represents a rise of 4.2 per cent on last year's figures and the largest single rise in voter registration since the 3.7 per cent rise recorded in 1981 before the election of François Mitterand as president. French citizens resident abroad are also registering to vote in record numbers, with 52,000 French citizens living in the United Kingdom having now registered, as against only 13,000 before the 2002 election. Similar increases, sometimes by as much as 25 per cent, among French voters resident abroad have been seen elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. In the past, most of the expatriate vote has tended to be for the centre-right, but many in the Royal camp are hoping that the large rise in voter registration, especially in France's underprivileged areas, may be enough to swing the result their way, or at least to make for a more respectable showing on the first round than Jospin managed five years ago. Royal's campaign, built on "respect for all and progress for everyone", centres on a "pact" with the French people that promises reduced unemployment, higher salaries and greater social protection. Billed as the result of a "listening campaign" held over many months among the French public, Royal has promised that if elected she will modernise French political life and bring politics closer to people's concerns. Sarkozy's campaign, headlined "together, everything is possible" and set out in a book handed out at the beginning of April, lists 15 points that include strengthening authority, restoring respect for law and order, reducing violence in France's underprivileged areas, and controlling immigration. A final point is being "proud to be French". The emphasis on law-and-order issues, as well as Sarkozy's record while minister of the interior, a post he left a few weeks ago, has raised disquiet in France at the ways in which he might deal with growing violence in the country, which reached a peak in weeks of rioting across France in late 2005. Sarkozy was seen at the time as having helped provoke that violence by describing the rioters as "scum" who should be "cleaned out with high- pressure hoses". There are also concerns that a Sarkozy presidency would mean tighter regulations on work permits and visas, and that there would be an increase in the expulsion from France of those without official documents, the so-called sans papiers, who are often of African, North African or Southeast Asian origin. An indication of Sarkozy's political reflexes, and a taster of what a Sarkozy presidency may mean, was seen at the end of March, when a routine ticket inspection at the Gare du Nord in central Paris, a major transport hub, degenerated into a riot. Hundreds of youths, mostly from the city's underprivileged suburbs, battled riot police, smashed property and disrupted rail communication with London and Brussels before order was restored. While Royal tried to keep her distance from the events and refused to be drawn into a debate on immigration and security, bugbears widely seen as having contributed to the Socialist Party's defeat in 2002, Sarkozy lost no time in appearing on television from the Gare du Nord in order to support the police. Earlier, Sarkozy had proposed the creation of a special ministry devoted to matters of immigration and "French identity", and he has shown a willingness to use events such as the riots at the Gare du Nord, presented in the left-wing press as a spontaneous protest against police brutality, as a way of wrong-footing Royal by focussing the news agenda on security issues. Sarkozy has broken a taboo of French life by proposing the creation of US-style "positive discrimination" schemes to help young people of immigrant origin, who are often seen as discriminated against in education and on the job market. However, the UMP candidate's reputation, and his apparent willingness to use concerns over immigration and security as a way of stoking up support for his campaign, are leading to concerns that a Sarkozy victory in two weeks time will result in greater polarisation in French society and possible further violence in underprivileged areas.
