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Sarkozy announces candidature for French presidency

Vaiju Naravane

Move hastened by the rising popularity of Segolene Royal

Nicolas Sarkozy

Paris: France's hard-line Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also the president of the ruling Right-wing UMP party, on Thursday announced his candidature for the presidential elections scheduled for April next year. His decision, announced in an interview given to over 60 regional French newspapers, came as no surprise.

Nor was it sheer chance that his announcement coincided with President Jacques Chirac's 74th birthday. The carefully selected date placed the spotlight on the fact that Mr Sarkozy at 51 is a full 23 years younger than the ageing statesman who makes no attempt to hide his dislike of his former acolyte and who continues to maintain the suspense around his own possible re-election bid.

Mr. Sarkozy's decision to announce his candidature not in a large national daily but in several regional newspapers was also aimed at giving a specific message — that he is close to provincial France, not just to the power centre in the capital.

"I feel the strength, the energy and the will to offer a different vision of France. I have the ambition to create a new relationship with the French people based on two words: trust and respect," Mr. Sarkozy said in the interview published on Thursday.

"This decision is a commitment, a life's choice. It is a weighty responsibility towards the French people who I ask to put their trust in me." The Minister, who has two-thirds of the party cadres backing him, decided to hasten his announcement because of the runaway popularity of the socialist candidate Segolene Royal, who, according to latest polls, would beat him. Forty-two per cent of voters said she would make a better head of state, against 36 per cent who favoured Mr. Sarkozy. For several months now, Mr. Sarkozy has spelled out his presidential ambitions.

He has attempted to cast himself as a moderniser who wishes to break away from the old establishment's cronyism and has talked about a peaceful "rupture" with the past. But many Centrists and Leftists see him as a dangerous demagogue, a free-wheeling capitalist whose political philosophy is close to that of the extreme Right and his many laws on immigration and crime have been described as "unnecessarily repressive".

Mr. Sarkozy said he wanted to restore France's image as "an example for the world," by encouraging social mobility, access to property, better schools and higher wages. "The Socialist Party has chosen immobility. I want to embody change," he said. "I want a break with the idea that you can work less and earn more, that you can allow everyone in and still integrate them properly, that lowering education standards makes the system more democratic."

Polls put Mr. Sarkozy almost neck-and-neck in the election race against Ms. Royal.

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