French president faces task of addressing concerns of a France hit hard by economic crisis, unemployment and the public deficit
The French president Nicolas Sarkozy has formally launched his battle for re-election, promising to grant the public a referendum on how to get France's growing unemployed off benefits.
Attempting to reverse a wide lead by the Socialist favourite Francois Hollande, Sarkozy suddenly brought forward his formal announcement of a second-term bid, appearing on the evening news of a TV channel owned by a close friend.
He said not to stand for re-election would be like a captain abandoning his ship "mid-storm".
A record-breakingly unpopular Sarkozy now faces the task of addressing the concerns of a France hit hard by the economic crisis, spiralling unemployment and gaping public deficit while at the same time throwing the spotlight off his contested record of five years in office.
"The central idea of my programme is to give power back to the French people via referendums," Sarkozy said, adding that his first referendum would focus on training schemes for the unemployed. This appeared to set the tone for a campaign that would pitch the values of "work" against a so-called benefits culture of people being mollycoddled by the state. His political opponents have attacked the idea as deliberately divisive. The centrist Francois Bayrou cautioned against "pitting one half of France against the other."
Sarkozy choice of the values of work as a key campaign theme is a delicate balancing act. Jobs are the number one worry for French voters. But although Sarkozy had promised full employment in 2007, joblessness is now at a 12-year-high of nearly 10% with almost 1 million more people unemployed than when he took office.
In the closest hint at what a majority of French see as the unfulfilled promises of his term, he said: "You can't do everything in five years." Despite his election on a huge mandate for sweeping reform in France, 70% of French people see his record as negative.
In a magazine interview at the weekend, Sarkozy had set out the themes of a campaign that is seen as even more staunchly right-wing than his first election. He stressed the right-wing notion of "values" and the importance of France's Christian heritage, overtly appealing to far-right voters from Marine Le Pen's Front National, who is around four points behind him in the polls. He also suggested a referendum on how to deal with illegal immigrants.
In his TV appearance, Sarkozy said he had a "horror" of homophobia after a deputy from his ruling right-wing UMP party sparked controversy when he said gay people had too much sway in France and denied gays had been sent to concentration camps from Nazi-occupied France.
Famous for his frenetic showmanship on the electoral trail, Sarkozy will start a bruising campaign schedule under the slogan "La France Forte", A Strong France, in an attempt to reinvent himself. The first is a visit on Thursday to a cheese factory in the Alps, already being seen as a nod to Charles de Gaulle's famous quip about the difficulty of bringing together "a country with 265 different cheeses."
At a campaign rally in his birth-town of Rouen in Normandy, Hollande said Sarkozy's record in office had been a "fiasco".
In the latest poll by Harris Interactive Hollande was on 28% for the first round in April, with Sarkozy on 24%, Le Pen on 20% and the centrist Francois Bayrou on 13%. Polls have shown Hollande would beat Sarkozy in a May run-off between the two.
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