It has been all too easy to forget that France is also holding presidential elections this year, writes David Tresilian in Paris As France prepares to go to the polls to elect a new president this weekend in the first round of the country's presidential elections, there has been little of the excitement that has attended the upcoming Egyptian presidential elections or the US presidential elections that are due to be held in November this year. With the incumbent, centre-right politician Nicolas Sarkozy, battling for his political future and a second term in office as France's president against frontrunner François Hollande, the Socialist Party candidate, and a handful of others from across the political spectrum, it has sometimes been difficult to remember that France will shortly be deciding who will be leading the country for the next five years. Compared with the spirited campaign he led in 2007 when Sarkozy positioned himself as a radical from the right, eager to shake up the country after years of perceived stagnation, during this year's campaign a somewhat chastened Sarkozy has gone so far as to admit failure in certain areas, promising the French public that if re-elected for a second term he will change his style of leadership if not his underlying political programme. Meanwhile, Hollande, Sarkozy's main challenger for the post of president and a quintessential career politician having climbed the Socialist Party hierarchy without ever holding government office, has sought to capitalise on his rather tepid image by presenting himself as a potentially "normal president" after five years of, according to him, overly frenetic activity. While Hollande is at a potential disadvantage due to his record as a paid-up member of France's political class, often seen as disconnected from economic realities, his message of reining in the excesses of the market system, promising to hire thousands of government workers, and raising taxes on those earning higher incomes has struck a chord with those who blame France's problems on too much Anglo-Saxon-style liberalism and an outgoing president perceived as having been the "president of the rich." In recent opinion polls, those questioned about their voting intentions in the presidential elections have put Sarkozy and Hollande neck and neck, with between 27 and 29 per cent saying they would be voting for Sarkozy on 28 April and much the same number opting for Hollande. However, the results have been very different when it comes to the second round of voting on 6 May, during which all but the two leading candidates are eliminated from the race. Should the second round be fought between Sarkozy and Hollande, the polls suggest, the latter would receive a whopping 56 per cent of the vote, with Sarkozy bringing up the rear on 44 per cent in results that would amount to a landslide victory for Hollande. As for the other candidates in the first round of the elections, while the extreme-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen has been scoring highly in the polls, placing her at some 16 per cent of the vote, as has the extreme-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has been hovering around 14 per cent, such percentages are unlikely to be enough to see either candidate through to the second round. Barring something unexpected happening in this Sunday's vote, Sarkozy and Hollande will therefore be facing each other in the election's second round, with a Hollande victory eventually being predicted by the polls. While the opinion polls have done little to inject a sense of urgency into the campaign, aside from rattling Sarkozy's supporters and fostering a possibly misplaced sense of security among those supporting Hollande, the terrain on which the contest has been fought may also have done little to fire the imagination. Caught on the wrong foot by the opinion polls, which have suggested that his personal unpopularity could be to blame for what could turn out to be a catastrophic defeat for the French president rather than any particular affection for Hollande, Sarkozy has been on the offensive in recent weeks despite the signs that he may be a lame-duck president with only weeks in office before him. According to his campaign website, if re-elected as president in May Sarkozy will cut French public expenditure further in an effort to arrive at a balanced budget in 2016, lower social security contributions on businesses to reduce labour costs and continue with labour-law reforms intended to make it easier for French businesses to hire and fire workers. Further efforts will be made to reform the country's social security system, and there will be more attempts to reform French schools and universities. Those on unemployment and other benefits will be subject to more stringent tests, and a system of apprenticeships and work-experience schemes will be introduced in an effort to lower youth unemployment. Other themes given prominence include reducing legal immigration by half, while restricting immigrant access to social security benefits. Should there be no progress in reducing illegal immigration into the EU and the Schengen group of countries that have abolished their internal borders, France will "re-establish targeted border controls" even if this means renegotiating existing treaties. In a theme possibly included following the killings in March this year of three French soldiers in the town of Montauban in southern France, followed by those of three children and their teacher at a Jewish school in nearby Toulouse, by Mohamed Merah, an Islamist terrorist, promoting extremist views or joining terrorist training-camps will be made criminal offences in France. While Sarkozy's programme is being presented under the heading of a "strong France," his main challenger has drawn up a set of "60 commitments" designed to bring about "change now." These also include arriving at a balanced budget, this time by 2017, though this will apparently be done not by cutting expenditure but by the targeted raising of taxes and the closing of tax loopholes. Youth unemployment will be lowered by the institution of special training schemes, public-sector reform will take place in consultation with the unions concerned, and small and medium-sized companies will be supported by the establishment of a public investment bank offering subsidised loans. There is no mention of labour-law reform in Hollande's programme, and those on benefits will apparently not face cutbacks or further tests. On the other hand, if elected Hollande will reduce the pay of government ministers by 30 per cent, along with that of the president, and the salaries of managers in public-sector companies will be capped. In what may turn out to be one of Hollande's most important undertakings as far as Europe is concerned, last year's European austerity pact, which saw Eurozone members sign up to stringent budget rules that would reduce their ability to run up deficits, will be renegotiated in the interests of stimulating growth and employment. Under Hollande's proposals, public spending could be increased to stimulate growth, the mandate of the European Central Bank would be renegotiated to remove blockages to fiscal stimulus, and Eurobonds would be created to allow indebted countries to borrow at low rates of interest, with the bonds being guaranteed by the Eurozone as a whole. Perhaps in anticipation of objections from Germany on this and other points of what promises to be an expansionary economic programme, and one going against current orthodoxy, Hollande writes that "I will defend the right of national parliaments and the European Parliament to be associated with these decisions. Fifty years after the signature of the Elysée Treaty, I will propose to our German partner the drawing up of a new Franco-German treaty." Perhaps it has been the desire of both candidates to present themselves as moderates, Sarkozy to soften his sometimes abrasive image and Hollande to prove to any sceptics that he is capable of managing the economy, which has led to the perceived lack of drama in this year's French presidential election campaign. It has also meant that fringe candidates on the extreme right or extreme left have tended to attract possibly unwarranted media attention, making up for the mainstream character of the two main candidates by tabling proposals such as those associated with the extreme-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon or the extreme-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen. Mélenchon, a former Socialist Party politician, wants to raise salaries, lower the retirement age, and reduce working hours, apparently without doing anything to promote growth or increase productivity. Le Pen, daughter of former leader of the Front National Jean-Marie Le Pen, wants to take France out of the European Union and for the country to leave the Eurozone. There is also the centrist candidate François Bayrou to contend with, whose projected score in the first round of the elections has been hovering around ten per cent of the vote. While none of these three candidates has much chance of making it through to the second round of the elections, other things being equal their votes will be redistributed between the two frontrunners on 6 May. Assuming that Mélenchon's votes go to Hollande and Le Pen's go to Sarkozy, this leaves Bayrou's vote unaccounted for, possibly putting the latter in the position of kingmaker should he come out in favour of either Sarkozy or Hollande. Rumours last week that Sarkozy had apparently offered Bayrou the post of prime minister in the next French government should he be re-elected president have only confirmed the centrist candidate's potentially pivotal role.
