Sarkozy elected French president

[Annie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070506/wl_nm/france_election_dc

Sarkozy elected French president

By Crispian Balmer 45 minutes ago

Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy won France's presidential election on Sunday, beating his Socialist rival Segolene Royal by a comfortable margin and extending the right's 12-year grip on power.

Within minutes of polls closing, Royal conceded defeat in a speech to party faithful in the heart of Paris.

"Universal suffrage has spoken. I wish the next president of the Republic the best in accomplishing his mission in the service of all the French people," she said.

Forecasts by four pollsters showed Sarkozy, 52, a hardline former interior minister, won around 53 percent of the vote in the second-round ballot and will succeed fellow conservative Jacques Chirac, who was president for 12 years.

Turnout was some 85 percent, the highest since 1981.

Sarkozy's face flashed up on television screens after polling stations closed at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT), signaling his victory and setting off jubilant scenes among supporters gathered in central Paris.

A swarm of cameramen on motorbikes followed his car as he swept through the city at twilight to talk to his supporters.

Across the French capital at Socialist headquarters, there was gloom after the party crashed to its third consecutive presidential election defeat. Party heavyweights immediately called for reform to make itself more appealing to voters.

Although opinion polls regularly suggested voters preferred Royal, who was seeking to become France's first woman head of state, they saw the uncompromising Sarkozy as a more competent leader with a more convincing economic program.

Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, presented himself as the "candidate of work," promising to loosen the 35-hour work week by offering tax breaks on overtime and to trim fat from the public service, cut taxes and wage war on unemployment.

TAKING OFFICE

He is expected to take office on May 16 or 17, and will be the first French president to be born after World War Two.

He will then name a new government and immediately launch into campaigning for June's parliamentary election, where he will seek a clear majority to implement his reform plans.

The president is elected for five years, is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, nominates the prime minister, has the right to dissolve the National Assembly and is responsible for foreign and defense policies.

Royal started the year as favorite, but a string of gaffes over foreign policy raised doubts over her competency. Deep ideological divisions in her own camp meant she could never enjoy unified support from the Socialists.

"We need to renew ourselves. It is the condition for regaining hope and I am available for that," said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist former finance minister, presenting himself as a future leader for the battered party.

The Socialists portrayed Sarkozy as a danger for France, saying he was authoritarian and likely to exacerbate tensions in the poor, multi-racial suburbs that ring many French cities.

They also accused him of fuelling 2005 suburb riots by promising to rid neighborhoods of what he said were the "scum" responsible for the troubles. Thousands of extra police have been drafted in to patrol sensitive suburbs on Sunday.

But by backing Sarkozy, voters showed they wanted a strong leader to resolve France's many problems, including high unemployment of at least 8.3 percent, falling living standards, job insecurity and declining industrial might.

He has promised a clean break with the policies of Chirac, once his political mentor, and says he will curb the powers of the unions and toughen sentencing for criminals.

On foreign policy, Sarkozy is more pro-American than Chirac, but has made clear he opposes the war in Iraq and will find it hard to ally himself too closely to Washington because of anti-U.S. sentiment at home.

He has said one of his first acts as president will be to visit Berlin and then Brussels to lay out plans for a mini treaty to replace the European Union constitution that French voters rejected in a 2005 referendum.

After months of grueling campaigning, he has also indicated he will take a rest next week before returning to Paris to work on his new government. Former Labor Minister Francois Fillon is widely expected to become prime minister.

 

[onedomino]

I do not think that Sarkozy's election will create any real thaw in US-France relations. There will be some congratulations and meaningless platitudes expressed, but that's about it. The anti-American view of most French people is too intense; almost genetic. Sarkozy cannot afford to alienate the people that elected him: the UMP, the party of Chirac. He may want to emulate some aspects of the American economic model, but expect continued French hostility toward US foreign policy. Do not look for any help in Iraq. Do not expect to see the French contribution to NATO forces in Afghanistan do anything but hide with the Germans in the uncontested northern areas. Perhaps there may be a few more French “abstain” postures in the UNSC in response to American initiatives, rather than the threatened vetoes of the past. An important signal from Sarkozy will be whether he continues Chirac’s very antagonistic and anti-American policy of trying to get the EU to drop its weapons trade ban with the totalitarians in China. Chirac repeatedly demonstrated with the Iraqis and Iranians that all you needed to trade with the French was money. Under Chirac, the French had an entirely “mercantile” foreign policy, where any concept of morality was checked at the door. Will Sarkozy continue such an amoral foreign policy? We will see.