France's next president

The two major political parties in France have now chosen their candidates for the upcoming presidential election. The vote is scheduled for April.

By a vote of its members in November, the country's largest left-wing party, le Parti Socialiste français, chose as its candidate Ségolène Royal, who thus became the first woman to have a serious shot at winning the French presidency. Since her nomination, she has been accused of not really having a solid campaign platform, however. She spent her first days on the campaign trail asking voters to tell her what they want her to do as president. Some have mocked her for that, saying that Royal is naïve about the business of governing.

Nonetheless, Royal is a graduate of the École Nationale d'Administration, the prestigious French civil service college. De Gaulle set up ENA after World War II as part of his plan to rebuild France and its institutions by training an elite cadre of top civil servants. Many of the country's highest-placed political, diplomatic, and government officials are graduates. Royal is currently a member of the French parliament, as well as president of the governing council in her home region in western France. She has held cabinet-level positions in the ministries of the Environment, Education, and Labor in past socialist governments.

Meanwhile, the largest right-wing party, L'Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, has recently picked as its candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, who currently holds two important French political positions. He is Minister of the Interior (i.e., head of the national police) in current president Jacques Chirac's government, and he is also the general secretary of the UMP party, which is descended from Charles de Gaulle’s political movement and which nominated Chirac for president in 1995 and 2002.

In his role as UMP secretary, some say, Sarkozy systematically eliminated all the other “candidates for the candidacy” and ensured his own presidential nomination. Chirac detests Sarkozy, apparently; their feud goes back to Chirac's presidential campaign in 1995, when Sarkozy decided to support his opponent for the UMP nomination. But “Sarko” has his followers, and Chirac has not been able to push him out of the political limelight.

During last year's rioting and car-burning by unemployed young people who live in the housing projects that ring Paris and other French cities, police-chief Sarkozy called the rioters “scum” (racaille) and said what the housing projects needed was for someone to go in with fire hoses (power washers, actually) and scour the places down. The rioters were largely the children of immigrants from black Africa and North Africa. Most were born in France, so under the law they are (first-generation) French citizens. A lot of people considered Sarkozy's comments to be over the top and not designed to calm the situation. His approach and attitudes scare some people, and anger others.

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Ségolène Royal was born in Sénégal in 1953, to French parents. Nicolas Sarkozy, son of a minor Hungarian aristocrat who immigrated to France after World War II and a Greek Jewish mother, was born in Paris in 1955. In other words, both candidates are fairly young, as presidential candidates go. And both have personal lives that have been the subject of some controversy in the press.

For example, Nicolas Sarkozy's wife left him a year or two ago, according to press reports, for another man. After a months-long separation, she returned home and they reconciled. She is making campaign appearances with him. There is still some snickering among pundits and satirists about the sincerity of their reconciliation. Sarkozy is seen by some as an ambitious man who wouldn't let marital difficulties get in the way of his presidential aspirations.

If Sarkozy is pulling the strings of the political party that nominated him, Royal's situation is just as complex. The leader of the French socialist party is a man named François Hollande, another graduate of ENA who just happens to be Ségolène Royal's longtime domestic partner. She and Hollande have been together as a couple since the late 1970s, but have never married. They have four children born between 1984 and 1992.

However that may be, as general secretary of the party Hollande did not pull strings to secure the socialists’ nomination for Royal, it is said — in fact, sometimes press reports make it seem he isn't even very happy about having her as the party's candidate. Rumors that their relationship is on the rocks have been fodder for the press and political satirists. Some say he might have wanted the nomination for himself. There is also some speculation about what post Hollande might be rewarded with if Ségolène Royal wins the election.

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Recently, François Hollande went before the press and spelled out a new tax plan that he said the socialists will implement if Royal is elected president. Any single person earning more than €4,000 a month, or any couple earning more than €8,000, would be required to pay a new supplemental income tax. (A monthly income of €4,000 euros is equivalent, at current exchange rates, to approximately $5,500 U.S. a month, or $66,000 a year.) Royal has been portrayed as not very pleased that Hollande would make such an announcement and has not yet been clear about whether she has bought into the plan.

Just yesterday, both Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy announced that they are subject to taxation under France's special tax on the wealthy, l’Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune. That annual tax has to be paid by individuals whose net worth is higher than €760,000, or about a million U.S. dollars. For people who own property in Paris or on the Riviera (as Royal and Hollande do, for example), that threshold is pretty low. Sarkozy grew up in the affluent Paris suburb of Neuilly and was that town’s mayor from 1983 until 2002, so it’s not surprising that he has to pay the wealth tax too.

Now all the French candidates are making their financial and property holdings public, which is unprecedented. The other parties fielding candidates are two extreme-left groups; the Greens; one center-right party; and the extreme-right Front National.

The two extreme-left candidates, bank clerk Arlette Laguiller and postal employee Olivier Besancenot, reported their total holdings at €27,000 and €37,000, respectively, which puts them far below the wealth-tax cut-off. Front National candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen was shown on the evening news yesterday telling a reporter that yes, he pays the wealth tax, and yes, I’ll tell you the brand of underwear I’m wearing, too, in case you want to know that!

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One of the most interesting aspects of the French presidential election for us Americans is that it is held in two rounds. Unless a candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round, which is highly unlikely to happen since there can be a dozen or more candidates, the two top vote-getters must face each other in a run-off election.

In fact, many French people I've talked to see the first round voting as a chance to vote with their hearts. They can cast a vote for the extreme right or the extreme left, thereby expressing their unhappiness with the mainstream parties, without having to worry that the extremists will actually get into office. In the run-off, they figure, they will vote for one of the two mainstream candidates.

In 2002, however, the mainstream socialist candidate was beaten by a small margin by extreme-right candidate Le Pen in the first round of the election. So the run-off election opposed moderate Chirac and extremist (some say fascist) Le Pen, which was an embarrassment to many in France. Though Chirac got less than 20% of the vote in the first round, he won the second round of the election with more than 80% of the vote.

President Chirac is being very coy about whether he might decide, at the last minute, to run for a third term, which is not forbidden under the French constitution. How badly does he want Sarkozy to lose? What would happen if Chirac and Sarkozy split the moderate right-wing vote, and Le Pen somehow outdistanced them both? Would a majority then vote for socialist Ségolène Royal in the second round? Or would enough moderate right-wing voters hold their nose and vote for Le Pen to elect him and keep the socialists out of power?

It’s also conceivable that the two winners of the first round will be Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Marie Le Pen. If the left wing is divided as it was in 2002, Ségolène Royal may not qualify for the second-round run-off. In that case, a lot of people, I predict, will hold their noses and vote for ... Sarkozy.

It’s going to be a fascinating election, that's for sure.

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P.S. This morning, Ségolène Royal suspended one of her principal press attachés because he joked on a TV talk show yesterday that her "only 'negative' as a candidate is her significant other," François Hollande. People interviewed on TV a minute ago lamented the lack of coordination between the socalist party's presidential candidate and the party's leader. "Don't they consult with each other as they are getting bathed and dressed in the morning?" said one man in the street.