CHIRAC, SARKOZY The French Right prepares for presidentials

Some even think that certain conservatives are actually quite intelligent people and worth being met personally.

But suppose, those suffer under this psychosomatic celebral dysfunction in happy solitude and privacy.

Où est Cecilia? France agog as Sarkozy's wife goes missing for 10 days

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Wednesday May 2, 2007
The Guardian

They seemed to style themselves on John and Jackie Kennedy, posing as a happy couple in the great outdoors, holding hands on boats. But for weeks Paris has been asking why Cecilia Sarkozy, the second wife of French presidential favourite Nicolas Sarkozy, has not been seen in public with her husband at his final public meetings before Sunday's election.
She appeared with him to cast her vote in the first round 10 days ago, and Le Figaro magazine has published the couple's parting kiss that day as Cecilia "went off to buy petit fours for a lunch with friends".

She has since appeared without her husband in Paris Match magazine clapping hands to a flamenco band at a gala dinner but she has not been seen at his headquarters where she advises him on image and communications and she has not joined him on stage.

Daniel Schneidermann, a media columnist for the left-leaning daily Liberation berated the silent French media for not asking more questions about Cecilia's whereabouts. "A wife leaving the marriage has far more serious consequences, both physical and psychological than some extramarital affair," he warned.

Even the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who yesterday publicly asked his 3.8m voters to abstain rather than elect Mr Sarkozy, drew attention to his wife's absence. Mr Sarkozy replied that he was protecting his family from the spotlight.

France, where privacy laws and a timid media mean politicians' relationships are normally left alone, is increasingly curious about its next potential "first lady" or "first gentleman".

Both the rightwing Nicolas Sarkozy, and the socialist Segolène Royal, said this week that they did not want official status for their partners. But in a nation with a growing love of celebrity, where the taboo over private lives has slowly been eroded following the revelations of Francois Mitterrand's illegitimate daughter Mazarine and Jacques Chirac's recent admissions that he had loved many women "as discreetly as possible", the future president's partnership has taken centre stage.

On the right, Cecilia, who is Mr Sarkozy's second wife, became the focus of media attention after her husband openly presented his family to the press. In 2005, she was pictured on the cover of Paris Match in New York in the company of another man, only to return in a frenzy of publicity while Mr Sarkozy described how having his heart broken had strengthened him and made him closer to the people.

He first met her when he was mayor of one of Paris's richest suburbs. Years later they divorced their partners and married, but, according to his biographer Catherine Nay, not before Mr Sarkozy's first wife, looking for her husband during a ski holiday, found tell-tale footprints in the snow below Cecilia's window.

Described as a "muse" and communications advisor who had an office adjoining her husband's when he was minister, Mrs Sarkozy is said to be wary of a role. She once said: "I don't see myself as a first lady. It bores me. I am not politically correct."

Ms Royal, the first woman with a chance of becoming president, is half of France's biggest political power couple. She has four children with but never married the socialist party leader, Francois Hollande.

Mr Hollande has appeared on a beach with his wife reading "The History of France for Dummies" while she was snapped in her bikini for a celebrity magazine. But he says he prefers his political title to "first gentleman" and would not move into the Elysée palace. Unlike Bill and Hillary Clinton's promise of "two for the price of one", they have been at pains to stress their political independence.

French press divided over who won debate

French newspapers on Thursday were divided as to whether rightwinger Nicolas Sarkozy or socialist Segolene Royal had won the television debate that could determine the outcome of this weekend's election.

"Nicolas Sarkozy did not lose. But Segolene Royal won," wrote the left-leaning Liberation newspaper, describing her performance as "pugnacious, precise and tough."

But the rightwing Figaro daily said Royal had been "often vague, at times aggressive" and that "at the end of the end, Sarkozy's self-control shone through." [..]

The popular Le Parisien said the "knives were out" during the tense debate and that the tone quickly turned confrontational.

"The surprise on Wednesday night was that each candidate was cast against type", with Royal going on the offensive from the start and Sarkozy keeping his cool, commented Le Parisien. [..]

Liberation's front page showed Royal, her jaw clenched, with the headline "Combative."

But the large-circulation daily Ouest-France said Sarkozy "came out looking more precise and solid" and that Royal "was still lacking in terms of presidential credibility."

"Neither of the candidates devoured the other. But there was some serious clawing," wrote editorialist Jacques Camus from La Republique du Centre newspaper.

The Republicain Lorrain newspaper wrote that "as the frontrunner, Sarkozy had more to lose than his rival in this joust" and that Royal "had every interest in staging an offensive."

"Fearing a misstep that could have been fatal, Nicolas Sarkozy avoided a cockfight," wrote L'Est Republicain.

"In the end, she was the one who fell into the trap after holding a series of sharp but constructive exchanges on the 35-hour workweek, taxation, education and security." [..]

Two and a half hours? And without commercial breaks too, I guess (was it on public TV?) How long do the US debates last? Gotta admire their fastidiousness..

By midway, Ms. Royal's perpetual smile disappeared from her face. Their tone was reminiscent of a couple bickering at the breakfast table, with the husband barely restraining his sense of superiority and the wife attacking him for not listening to her.

"You understand me perfectly but you pretend you don't understand," Ms. Royal told her rival.

Memory of May '68 protests imbue French vote

DOUG SAUNDERS
Globe and Mail
May 3, 2007

The scent of tear gas and the crack of police batons were hard to detect in the warm air of Paris, but somehow the 39-year-old spirit of mass protest has returned to haunt this week's French presidential elections.

The intense electoral battle between conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and socialist Ségolène Royal, in the frenetic run-up to Sunday's final vote, has suddenly erupted into a bizarre and surprising debate over the legacy of May, 1968, when enormous student demonstrations transformed into a wider mass protest that effectively shut down the country for three weeks.

The immediate effects of those long-ago protests were limited: Schools and universities reformed their admissions systems and French voters elected a conservative government to quell the protests.

But those heady days of protest, which have become part of national mythology, appear to have captivated Mr. Sarkozy, who launched a long and sometimes bizarre rant against "the heirs of May '68," a likely reference to Ms. Royal, during a speech on Sunday night at what was probably his largest rally before this weekend's vote.

"In this election, it is a question of whether the heritage of May '68 should be perpetuated or if it should be liquidated once and for all. The heirs of May '68 have damaged political morale," a sweat-drenched Mr. Sarkozy announced to an overflowing arena in Bercy, in eastern Paris, on Sunday night. "The heirs have weakened the idea of citizenship by denigrating the law, the state and the nation."

Up to that point, it sounded like the rants made by U.S. Republicans, Canadian conservatives and British Prime Minister Tony Blair against what they see as the damaging values of the 1960s. But then he took it to another level.

"See how the belief in 'money is king,' the belief in short-term profit and speculation, how the values of financial capitalism grew out of May '68, because there are no more rules, no more norms, no morality, no more respect, no authority," he said. "Everything has a price, so everything is allowed."

It had the effect of putting the issue, as distant to most French voters as Vietnam is to Americans, right back on the agenda: For the past two days, the French media and the people around a great many café tables have been consumed with a bewildered debate over the merits and faults of the soixante-huitistes, as those '60s protesters are today known.

"You had to pinch yourself to believe he'd said it," said Dominique Dhombres, a columnist with the newspaper Le Monde who attended the speech.

"The rise in stock-market speculation is the daughter of May '68? You have to strain to make that linkage. As I recall, the demonstrators of '68 went to the stock exchange to burn it, not to buy hedge funds."

Tuesday night, Ms. Royal fired a retort, which both ridiculed Mr. Sarkozy and defended the May '68 legacy, a position that is sure to keep the debate alive.

"Two days ago, he blamed everything on May '68," she told a noisy crowd. "I wonder what fly bit him. May '68 was 40 years ago!"

"Everything seemed calm around Bercy the other day," she continued, "but to hear him talk, you would think there were cars burning nearby, barricades, lax morals and tear gas in the air. The time machine seemed to be working perfectly for him."

The May '68 debate seemed to creep even into last night's televised debate, watched by half the French population. Mr. Sarkozy described a France in which work had lost its valour - one of the things he had earlier blamed on the protesters - and promised a break from those traditions.

"Madame Royal, we work less than the others," he said at one point. "How do we get one percentage point more in growth? By respecting work, giving work its value, considering work, giving work it its worth. ... We cannot continue to do politics as before."

Ms. Royal was 14 at the time of the protests (Mr. Sarkozy was 13) and has spent much of her career as a Socialist distancing herself from the party's protest-movement culture. Initially known for her moralistic positions in favour of censorship, she today favours a law-and-order position on many matters of immigration and crime. But, instead of dissociating herself from the charge, she took an equally surprising tack, devoting her speech to defending the legacy of May '68.

"I don't want to get back to the situation of social immobility we had in 1968, just because the people in power didn't want to redistribute the wealth of the postwar economic boom," she said.

"When I hear Nicolas Sarkozy say that he wants to 'liquidate' May '68," she told an interviewer yesterday, "I think he's using very violent vocabulary. ... I think he should remember that May '68 was also 11 million strikers, who obtained the right to organize and earn higher wages."

So Sunday's election, in which the two candidates are now within four percentage points of one another, appears to be transforming itself into a referendum on the values of 1968.