Jobs still key issue for front runners in French polls

Royal and Sarkozy are trying not to get sidetracked by other concerns



PARIS - THE French presidential race entered its final two-week stretch yesterday with the leading candidates still struggling to refocus on the single issue - jobs - which preoccupies voters.

The Socialist Party's Ms Segolene Royal and the right-wing UMP's Mr Nicolas Sarkozy offer sharply different views on how to stimulate the sluggish economy and create secure private-sector jobs.

But they are spending precious campaign time extricating themselves from blunders, responding to attacks from rivals and trying to convince voters they have the temperament and gravitas to be president.

The latest opinion polls show Mr Sarkozy, 52, the former interior minister, as the front runner for the first round of voting on April 22.

A lawyer by training, he says he wants to break the taboos of French politics by getting tough with criminals, setting immigration quotas and making it simpler to hire and fire workers.

Ms Royal, 53, a relative newcomer to national politics, burst onto the scene last year as a novelty and fresh face for the squabbling, ideologically hidebound Socialists.

As the first woman to be nominated for president by a mainstream party, she says she is closer to day-to-day concerns of French families and would boost state subsidies for both job creation and research into new technologies.

Ten other candidates are also in the race.

With the exception of Mr Francois Bayrou, a former minister in various right-wing governments who now calls himself an anti-party centrist, they range from radical communists on the left to far-right nationalists.

Most have no chance of being elected but they could drain support from the front runners.

In first-round voting in 2002, the last time the French elected a president, more than 60 per cent of the votes went to such minor party candidates.

With that in mind, both Ms Royal and Mr Sarkozy are trying to present themselves to disillusioned voters as reformers.

And to a great extent, say analysts, they have succeeded.

'The major candidates this time are themselves candidates of renewal, in terms of generation and otherwise,' said Mr Roland Cayrol, director of the CSA Institute, a political research company.

'There are still doubts, but there is also a real satisfaction that a page has turned because there are new faces, a new way of talking and a more frank discussion of our problems.'

Mr Sarkozy has long been a lightning rod for controversy over his support for a greater state role in regulating Muslim religious life, his description of ghetto rioters in late 2005 as 'scum' and his tendency to lash out at critics.

Aware of his reputation for shooting from the hip, he has repeatedly vowed that he has changed his ways and is no longer so quick to anger.

But his opponents are urging voters to choose 'anyone but Sarkozy', casting him as a pro-capitalist who would eliminate France's vast array of social benefits and protections.

Ms Royal, a regional council president who wants to give local governments more freedom to experiment with economic development plans, has also had image problems.

She has lashed out at her critics as sexists who hold her to a different standard because she is a woman.

But polls show that many people consider her vague on issues such as reducing the country's massive debt, restoring its diplomatic prestige and promoting economic growth.

Her opponents characterised her two foreign trips, first to the Middle East and then to China, as amateurish.

But she has stuck to her positions even when they strayed from traditional French foreign policy, as when she defended her statement that Iran should not have a nuclear energy programme.

Her campaign has become almost wholly reactive.

When Mr Sarkozy played to nationalist sentiment by proposing a new ministry for immigration and national identity, she responded by calling for a flag in every French home.

Her suggestion drew catcalls from her core base on the left.

She has been on safer ground, at least according to Socialist tradition, with her proposals to penalise companies which move jobs outside of France and pay employers to hire and train young people.