Sarkozy suffers setback in municipal elections
The opposition Socialist Party and its allies won 49.5 percent of the vote in the final round of elections Sunday, compared with the 47.5 obtained by the president’s Union for a Popular Movement and parties affiliated with it, according to a voting-day telephone poll by the CSA institute.
Most of the 21 ministers who ran in municipal elections looked set to win and the president’s camp also appeared on course to keep control of Marseille, France’s second-biggest city, and one of the most closely watched races of the election.
But the Socialists took several hotly contested urban fiefs from the right, including Toulouse and Strasbourg, and retained control of Paris and Lyon.
The education minister, Xavier Darcos, and the junior minister for human rights, Rama Yade, were among those in the cabinet who lost their bids.
Segolene Royal, Sarkozy’s Socialist rival in the presidential elections last year, called the result a protest vote and urged the government to scrap a series of recent tax cuts.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon struck a defiant tone, vowing to pursue a program of economic change that he said was endorsed by voters in presidential and legislative elections last year.
We are going to continue with these policies because one needs tenacity to reform our country and because the respect of democracy demands that our commitments are fulfilled, Fillon said in a televised address.
But privately, officials said that the blow suffered in this first electoral test since Sarkozy took office 10 months ago could mark the beginning of a new phase in his presidency - if not in substance, certainly in style.
After Sarko the American, the fiery reformer who won the presidency on an ambitious platform of change, and President Bling Bling, whose public romance with a former model and open penchant for luxury cost him the trust of his core electorate, Sarkozy could edge closer to the sober and paternal image of a classic French president, officials say.
I know that this election will also have a political meaning, which I will hear and which I will take into account, Sarkozy himself told the conservative daily Le Figaro earlier this month, when his approval rating had hit a new low of 37 percent.
Perhaps most dramatically for a president famous for his constant presence in the media, Sarkozy is scrapping the post of his spokesman and ending the U.S.-style weekly press briefing at the Elysee Palace.
Instead, his director of communications, Franck Louvrier, has been told to speak to the press off the record.
Other changes are already under way: The glossy spreads with photos of Sarkozy and his new wife, Carla, holding hands at Disneyland and embracing in front of Egyptian ruins have been replaced by standard press images of the president and the first lady making state visits and playing host to state dinners.
The army of presidential advisers, who have at times sent contradictory messages on policy, has been told to keep a lower profile. And the number of presidential trips to France’s rural and industrial heartlands is scheduled to rise to two per week; Sarkozy even plans to hold some of his weekly cabinet meetings outside of Paris.
At this time of economic difficulty for many French people, it is important that the president is in phase with them, said an adviser, who declined to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the press.
Officials in the Elysee Palace also hint that the president wants to consult more closely on policy with lawmakers in his camp and rely more on Fillon, whose popularity rating has surged. But neither a broad reshuffle of his cabinet, nor a softening of his reform plans is in the cards, officials said.
Voter discontent has more to do with style issues, not with policy, Andre Santini, secretary of state for civil service, who was re- elected mayor of Issy-les-Moulineaux, a suburb south-west of Paris, said in an interview with International Herald Tribune.
This election came at an inconvenient time: too late for the post-election honeymoon and too early to see any effects of the reforms we have already undertaken.
One key to reversing Sarkozy’s slide in the polls will be to win back the trust of low-income voters, analysts said.
Sluggish economic growth and rising prices now lead voters’ concerns, and polls indicate that the French are increasingly doubtful about the president’s economic policy agenda. –IRNA
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