French President Jacques Chirac's announcement that he does not seek a third presidential term comes as no surprise, but it does little to clarify who his successor might be, writes David Tresilian in Paris French President Jacques Chirac announced last week that he would be bowing out of French political life after a career of more than 40 years, including two terms spent as president, by not standing for a third term in the country's forthcoming presidential elections, the first round of which takes place in April. While Chirac's announcement was hardly unexpected, and has several times been hinted at, his exit from the French political scene after a career in which he has held all the major offices of state -- including several times prime minister, the first time in the 1970s, and president from 1995 onwards -- marks the end of an era in French political life, and cuts the country's final links with the Gaullist regime of the 1960s. Greeted generally respectfully by the mainstream French newspapers, Chirac's announcement was also the occasion for some anxious soul-searching on the part of the country's media pundits. These have been concerned to arrive at an accurate estimate of the outgoing president's record and where his exit from the political scene now leaves the country in the run up to April's presidential elections. According to a front-page editorial signed by editor Jean-Marie Colombani that appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde last week, Chirac's various parting "messages" to the French public, made in an address shown on national television, were those of a man who has spent his life attempting to secure the "French exception" and the values that go with it. "In a world that is going through some massive changes," the newspaper said, "he has made us hear the reassuring voice of someone who believes in the survival of the 'French model'", in a reference to traditional French distrust, on both left and right of the political spectrum, of free-market economics, and to the country's historical preference for high levels of social protection and state intervention in the economy. However, while Chirac's "messages" warning the French public of the dangers of "extremism, racism... and the rejection of others" and of the need to be loyal to the "French model", to continue the process of European integration, and to promote "development for all" were respectfully received by the newspaper, they "give no guarantee that a positive energy will now be felt in the country" or that the current presidential election campaign will rise above the kind of "individual preoccupations that have thus far obscured the major choices facing the country". Chirac's period in office, the newspaper said, had been marked by "a capacity for action that has been either reduced or negated by events", his attempts to reduce social inequalities and unemployment in France having failed, and his attempts to reform the state pensions system and the country's employment laws having been shelved in the face of massive popular protests. In foreign policy, the paper went on, Chirac's presidency will be remembered both for the conflict with the United States over its invasion of Iraq, France having threatened to veto American attempts to secure UN Security Council backing prior to the 2003 invasion, and for the failure to win French voters over to the proposed European constitution in 2005, which was decisively rejected in a referendum and later abandoned. While Le Monde last week adopted the careful tones of a paper of record in its estimate of Chirac's record, other French papers were less respectful. According to the satirical weekly Le Canard enchainé, Chirac had been rendered so "blind by his love for France" when sizing up his historical legacy that he had forgotten to read out his "real record", which consisted of an almost doubling of the national debt during his 12 years in office and further increases in taxation. Chirac's political demise now leaves the way open to a new generation of politicians who came to prominence in the 1980s under the presidency of François Mitterand. Both the frontrunners in the current presidential election campaign, socialist Ségolène Royal and centre-right UMP party candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, began their careers in the early 1980s, though on opposite sides of the country's political divide. However, Chirac's exit from French political life has not made the country's future direction any clearer. While Royal, behind in the polls, has been building a campaign based on traditional socialist recipes of enhanced state intervention and improved social services, Sarkozy has been busily emphasising staples of centre- right politics, such as law-and-order issues and immigration, themes that he has made his own during time spent as minister of the interior in the government of current French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. A "third way" candidate in the shape of centre-right politician François Bayrou, a former education minister, has also recently emerged to challenge the "ideological divide" represented by the two main candidates, shaking the assumption that the presidential elections will necessarily end in a run-off between Sarkozy and Royal in the second round on 6 May. Yet, as Le Monde pointed out in its editorial on the choices facing France in the post-Chirac period, none of the main candidates seems to have taken full measure of the challenges facing the country, particularly the "major questions... of the strategic impasse following the country's loss of leadership in Europe, and the country's lack of confidence in its own future, which is the reflection of the great unhappiness felt by its middle classes." Royal has not yet proved that she is made of presidential material, the paper said, and her attempts at "modernising" leftist politics, drawing on the experience of Blairism in Britain, have not helped with her "problems of credibility". For his part, Sarkozy seems wedded to "a traditionalist conception of the exercise of power", the paper said, seeing it as a matter of giving orders from the top. His "incoherent" proposals with regard to the economy, and his abuse of "ideological feelers" put out to voters sympathetic to the extreme-right National Front Party, mixing concerns over immigration with questions of national identity in "an incomprehensible and provocative fashion", have also led to much disquiet. Bayrou's strategy of presenting himself as a third-way candidate, representing "neither [free-market] liberalism, nor social democracy", raises questions of "governability", the paper said. He will "hardly be able to continue his campaign... without giving proof that he has political means that are equal to his ambitions." All in all, Le Monde commented, "each of the three candidates has provided preliminary answers to a country that is waiting for renewal. However, their belonging to a new generation is not in itself enough: what is needed is a vision" for the future. With a month to go before the first round of the presidential elections on 26 April, this vision, the paper seemed to indicate, has not yet emerged in the current campaign, the three leading candidates so far not being up to the challenges that Chirac's two terms in office have bequeathed to them.
