Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal set out her manifesto for April's French presidential elections last weekend. But has she left it too late to dent the momentum of centre-right darling Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign, asks David Tresilian in Paris With a little over two months to go before the first round of the French presidential elections on 22 April, to be followed by a second round on 6 May, Socialist Party candidate Ségolène Royal formally set out the party's manifesto at a meeting last weekend outside Paris. Royal, whose lacklustre campaign has thus far been spreading panic in Socialist Party ranks, set out a "contract with France" in the shape of 100 proposals that are a reference to the similar "110 proposals" put forward by the victorious socialist presidential candidate François Mittérand in 1981. Her campaign managers will be hoping that these proposals, the result of a "listening" exercise conducted with focus groups across France, will be enough to put the flagging socialist campaign back in the political spotlight and give a much-needed boost to Royal's popularity. In recent weeks, this has fallen well behind that of the centre- right candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, also minister of the interior in the government of French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Royal's strategy has been to capitalise on the fact that she is the first woman to be picked as a major party's candidate in presidential elections, and that she has comparatively little experience of national politics. This suggests that she is free of the taint of corruption that has clung to politicians from both left and right over the past few decades and that has tarnished the reputation of France's traditionally male political class. She has advertised herself as being open to new ideas from the population as a whole and not only from the country's tightly-knit political class, and she has consistently posed as the champion of the decentralisation of France's traditionally highly centralised political life. Royal believes that the population should be involved in politics in new ways, such as through "citizen juries" in which people would be invited to comment on proposed legislation in focus groups, and through enhanced use of the Internet. While all this may be designed to reverse a trend in France that has seen falling popular participation in the activities of the traditional political parties and sometimes very low turn-out rates at elections, it has left Royal open to the charge that she is interested more in presentation than in substance, and that she has no real policies to deal with France's many problems. Royal's proposals are designed to counter this charge, and they include measures that have a strong social component, such as raising pensions and reforming social housing. According to the French newspaper Le Monde, Royal's proposals are divided into "struggles", including "the struggle against an ever-more expensive daily life" and "against every form of violence". They are based on the three main "pillars" of "economic development, and efficient social and environmental action". The proposals are designed to help put Royal back on the news agenda, which has been dominated thus far by the activities of the energetic and controversial centre-right candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, who is Royal's only serious rival for the presidency. Having outmanoeuvered both de Villepin and the current French President Jacques Chirac and secured the centre-right UMP party's nomination, Sarkozy's victory in the April/May elections is being predicted with growing levels of confidence by commentators in the Paris press. With Chirac only announcing last weekend that he would not stand for a third term as president, the way now looks open for the younger man, Sarkozy's only worries being Royal, expected to gather the combined left-wing vote, and the veteran extreme-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen from France's Front national (FN). Instant biographies of the main candidates have been littering supermarket check-outs for some time, with both Sarkozy and Royal producing airbrushed versions of their careers before this year's face-off. While Royal's Désirs d'avenir (Wishes for the Future), a dullish account of a career spent in regional politics, was difficult to find in Paris bookstores last weekend, Sarkozy's Témoignage (Bearing Witness) was everywhere, graced by an unusually smiling photograph of the man himself. In the book Sarkozy explains that as an "outsider" to French political life, having had "neither connections nor money" to help him, he hopes to give new energy to those "many people who have given up hope for a better tomorrow". As is usual in France, some dozen candidates are also standing in this year's presidential elections, including well-known figures from the country's political life, such as the Communist Party (PCF) candidate Marie- George Buffet, Arlette Laguiller of the left- wing party Lutte ouvrière, the first woman to stand in a French presidential election in 1974 and a candidate in every election since, and José Bové, an anti-globalisation activist who is believed to represent farming sentiment from la France profonde. The majority of the candidates are expected to be eliminated on the first round of voting, presumably leading to a head-to-head confrontation between Sarkozy and Royal on the second round. However, if Royal does as badly in the first round as the Socialist Party candidate, Lionel Jospin, did in the last presidential elections, Sarkozy may find himself fighting against the FN's Le Pen, as Chirac did in 2002. France is suffering from a gamut of problems, ranging from discontent among public-sector workers over pay, the on-going crisis in France's disadvantaged areas that saw a wave of arson attacks and riots in late 2005, and the fading influence of France abroad and in the European Union, signaled by French voters' rejection of the proposed European Constitution in May 2005. The country has recently posted a record balance-of- payments deficit on external trade, and it has one of the highest levels of public debt in Europe, doubling in recent years to around 64 per cent of GDP. Unemployment remains high, growth low, and high rates of tax and social security and other contributions cripple incentive. The present president, Jacques Chirac, was elected in 1995 on a platform of improving the lot of the approximately 10 per cent of the French population that is without a job and on reducing the growing "fracture" between those in highly protected, though increasingly poorly paid, jobs and the army of the unemployed beyond the gates. More than a decade on, France's social and economic problems are worse than ever, and Chirac faces the prospect of prosecution on corruption charges, should his immunity be lifted when he leaves office. Against this background Sarkozy has been marketing himself as a breath of fresh air, and as someone prepared to take on the entrenched interests that are allegedly holding the country back. A good deal of Royal's appeal comes from the fact that she is not Sarkozy, the latter having a reputation both as a political bruiser and as someone whose idea of France does not include the traditional post-war virtues of corporatism and consensus. Not only has Sarkozy made it clear that he favours the reform of France's employment law, abandoned last year in the face of monster demonstrations leading to near riots in central Paris, but he has also gone out of his way to attack some of the sacred cows of French life, such as the country's vast public- sector workforce, proposing that 50 per cent of all civil servants should not be replaced on retirement. He has attacked many of the poorest and most vulnerable members of French society, including immigrants and the inhabitants of France's underprivileged city suburbs, and he has made a habit of appearing on television surrounded by police, as if to underline his credentials as the "law-and-order" candidate. In the face of Sarkozy's popularity in the opinion polls, it is not yet clear whether any of this will be enough to keep him out of presidential office. It is not clear, either, whether it will be enough to secure the election of his main opponent, Ségolène Royal.
