Sarkozy and Juppé in crowded field to be next French president
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Version 0 of 1. France’s opposition party will field eight candidates in primaries to decide who will lead it in next year’s presidential election. Polls suggest the winner of the November two-round party vote will become the country’s next leader. After Les Républicains (LR) party nominations closed on Friday evening, the stage was set for a rightwing “duel” between former president Nicolas Sarkozy and former prime minister Alain Juppé, now mayor of Bordeaux. Polls predict that whoever wins the primary will be in the second-round runoff next May against the Front National’s Marine Le Pen; the latest show Juppé, 71, still the favourite with LR voters, but Sarkozy, 61, snapping at his heels. According to market researchers TNS Sofres, if the election were held tomorrow Juppé would win the second round against Le Pen with 55% of votes, but pollsters agree that former Socialist finance minister Emmanuel Macron could seriously upset the contest if he decides to stand. Macron, an ex-banker, resigned from the Socialist government last month but has not said if he will join the presidential race. Le Figaro suggests he would knock out Sarkozy to take third place. The only woman among the eight LR candidates, former minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, 43, is an outside bet. It was the first time the mainstream right (party names have changed over the years) has organised a primary. The vote will be open to all on the electoral roll who pay €2 towards organisation costs – for each round – and declare “on their honour … to share the republican values of the right and centre”, but this is unlikely to deter non-supporters’ attempts to skew the result. Gaël Sliman, president of the Odoxa polling institute, said the eight candidates represented the gamut of the centre-right in France. “The turnout will be a major factor. It should be massive; if it tops four million voters it will be a great success,” Sliman told La Dépêche newspaper. He warned the polls were not an infallible prognosis. “The debates between candidates, the campaign, can change views … let’s not forget, for primary voters, the important thing is to choose the person who has the best chance of winning the presidential, and among right voters the idea is fixed that either Juppé or Sarkozy will win.” Over on the left, les frondeurs (rebels) of the Socialist party (PS) met yesterday to agree on a candidate to stand against François Hollande. A serving president would normally go forward for a second term without serious challenge from his own ranks, but Hollande’s popularity rating, according to the latest Ifop poll, is a disastrous 18%. Under the banner “Turn left to win”, former ministers and presidential hopefuls Arnaud Montebourg and Benoît Hamon, both sacked from government two years ago, were expected to slug it out for the PS nomination.The French Communist Party (PCF), which held its traditional Fête de l’Humanité this weekend, is also in disarray. In 2012 the party backed Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Front de Gauche, the first time since 1981 it did not field its own candidate in a presidential election. Yves Thréard, deputy director of the right-leaning Figaro newspaper speaking on Europe 1 radio, lambasted the PCF as “infested with Trostkyists” and said the weekend event was nothing more than a “music festival”. “The class struggle has given way to a defence of local (food) products. Already in the 1970s, when the Soviet Union was still standing … people came mainly to listen to the greatest rock bands on the planet. who were filthy rich and pure products of decadent capitalism,” Thréard railed. |