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Will the real Mr. Sarkozy please stand up?

Nicolas Sarkozy’s election as President of France in May 2007 was a triumph. He won 53 per cent of the vote, handsomely beating Socialist Segolene Royal in one of the most exciting French elections of recent times. Mr. Sarkozy won by promising a clean break with the past that would lift France from its present economic limbo, modernise the economy by dismantling rigid and obsolete socio-economic structures, increase purchasing power, and drastically reduce illegal im migration.

He was charming, charismatic and superbly efficient with remarkable communication skills. “I will be the President of increased purchasing power. I shall pick it up with my teeth, if needed,” he promised during his campaign. French voters took him at his word, placing their trust in his promises to create more jobs, increase prosperity and security, and to adapt France to the new globalised world.

And during the first five months of his reign it appeared the diminutive President with the king-sized ego who has often been compared to Napoleon Bonaparte (short, ambitious, egocentric, ruthless) could do no wrong. After his first 100 days in office his popularity rating was as high as 71 per cent.

The hyperactive Mr. Sarkozy started his presidency with remarkable zeal, tackling several social reforms all at once, taking on striking railway workers, pushing through harsher sentences for repeat young offenders, fixing expulsion quotas for illegal immigrants, and giving away some €15 billion in fiscal gifts in order to raise purchasing power.

Mr. Sarkozy was everywhere at once. He dominated television news as never before. If the presidential dictum in the past was to dole out public appearances in minute quantities, then Mr. Sarkozy’s was the very opposite. And what at first seemed like a long and never-ending honeymoon between him and the French public began to sour as 2007 gave way to 2008. Initially, the French were fascinated by his activism, seeing a new energy at the Elysee Palace. But when the promised purchasing power did not materialise and economic pundits predicted a harsher reality to come, the “Sarko Show” started to pall.

His credo of “work more to earn more” sounded hollow. The dismantling of France’s 35-hour working week “in order to release productive energy” appeared incoherent and inconsistent, and the man in the street began to compare his own poor plight with the President’s jet-set lifestyle and decided he did not like it at all. Laurent Joffrin, a respected commentator at the daily Liberation, dubbed him the “Bling Bling President” (in-your-face or show-off President) because of his flamboyance and flashy lifestyle. “Sarkozy the man has pulverised the institution of the President by incarnating democracy where the individual is anointed by a show business political class. He has perfectly integrated the oh-so-contemporary culture of reality TV with its ferocious competition, constant one-upmanship, use of popular language and its exposure of the intimate. The soap opera of his love life displayed on glossy pages is an illustration of that.”

Had Mr. Sarkozy been able to show spectacular economic results and turned the economy around during his first eight months in office, the French would probably have forgiven him his public dalliances, his flashy clothes, and clunky watches. But many of his most loyal voters, mainly pensioners and working class men and women, feel he has forgotten them while more than doubling his own salary and concentrating on his adventures. In doing so he has, they say, heaped indignity on the presidential office. The result has been a fall in popularity to below 50 per cent. For the first time, his discreet and self-effacing Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, has overtaken Mr. Sarkozy in the public’s heartbeat.

The result has been a hail of critical articles and satires, including one by Patrick Rambaud winner of the Prix Goncourt (the equivalent of the Booker Prize) entitled Chronicles of the Reign of Nicolas I (Chronique du règne de Nicolas 1er) which depicts the President as Napoleon in a famous painting of the Emperor riding a fiery stallion.

But to be fair to Mr. Sarkozy there is more substance to the man than just his style. He is remarkably intelligent and has a certain vision for France. He would like to “dismantle the legacy of May 1968” which he feels is one of laxism in all social matters — education, security, social welfare — and put the country back to work. He would like to move away from France’s strict separation of religion and state, what he calls “negative laicity” and see more religion in public discourse and he would like to win back for France its lost grandeur and clout, both economic and political. He has therefore proved to be an aggressive salesman abroad, arguing heatedly for nuclear technology for Arab states saying “they will need energy when petroleum stocks dry up,” promising a more “moral” foreign policy before ignoring his own dicta in his efforts to woo Libya’s Muammar Qadhafi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and win €20 billion worth of contracts from the Chinese.

He recently extended a hand of friendship to Washington and hardened French rhetoric on Iran while trying to undercut Washington’s influence in the Persian Gulf by obtaining the first French base in the Arab world in Abu Dhabi. In order to keep Turkey out of the European Union, Mr. Sarkozy has proposed a Mediterranean Union of countries around that body of water (much to the ire of Germany and other European partners) and he has hinted at a possible return of France to NATO’s integrated military command in exchange for America’s agreement for a separate European defence where France would, of course, be the lead nation. More recently, Mr. Sarkozy said he would adopt a “policy of civilisation” (a phrase borrowed straight from left-wing philosopher Edgar Morin’s book of the same name) whereby the well-being of humanity would be placed at the centre of the state’s concerns. Pragmatism in foreign, as in domestic policy, is Mr. Sarkozy’s byword.

But this flurry of proposals especially on the domestic front has sent alarm bells ringing in several quarters of the French republic. Many found Mr. Sarkozy’s praise of the Saudi leadership which propagates a harsh version of Islam as rulers who “appeal to the basic values of Islam to combat the fundamentalism that negates them” to be both opportunistic and shocking. Opposition Socialist leader Francois Hollande described it as an “ideological stand that makes religion into an instrument to promote French products such as civilian nuclear plants in Muslim countries. Mixing religion and foreign policy is illogical and wrong.”

His decision to fix expulsion quotas for illegal immigrants which has resulted in a ruthless hunt for clandestine aliens and some heartbreaking human tragedies has drawn the fire of human rights organisations. Eric Le Boucher writing in Le Monde called his policies “incoherent” while Marc de Scitivaux, a professor of economics with decidedly pro-market views, described the President’s performance as “grotesque.”

Dominique Moisi, special adviser to the French Institute for International Relations, summed it up when he said: “One senses an energy, a dynamism, a strong will, pragmatism, intuition; and when people say France is back in Europe and the world, it is true. And yet, all that is stained by errors in the detail, by contradictions, that are all the more troubling because they reveal, beyond the intuition, perhaps an absence of strategic thinking, if not an absence of professionalism.”

Now Mr. Sarkozy comes to India, a country he does not know, on a trip that has caused some bewilderment and received a measure of bad press, essentially because of the Elysee’s failure to communicate. The feeling in France is that India can be a difficult partner (especially after incidents such as the abrupt cancellation of the Eurocopter deal) and that India’s foreign policy positions remain obscure if not nebulous. Certainly, in the fields of civilian nuclear technology, defence, environment, aviation, and other technologically advanced sectors France has much to offer. France’s support to India on the question of a permanent United Nations Security Council seat and its recent proposal that the G8 be enlarged to include emerging economies including India is gratifying to New Delhi.

However, what place India occupies in the French scheme of things, in its foreign policy priorities and options (besides being a prospective buyer of big ticket items in technology-intensive fields) remains a mystery. For, if New Delhi has failed to clarify its positions, Paris appears to have its eyes fixed firmly on augmenting its international political profile — whether it is by pursuing a more energetic middle eastern policy, carving out a special role in Europe and the Mediterranean or becoming America’s new best friend. Where India fits into the French vision (except in economic terms) remains hazy. Mr. Sarkozy likes to announce large contracts and this time, alas there are no huge contracts to sign. But this trip could be used to pave the way for a deeper, clearer, and better understanding in order to forge a relationship that genuinely reflects mutual interests.

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