France has a new President But it is not Over yet

France turned a major page in its history May 6, voting into office for the next five years a new and new generation president dedicated to radical change.

But the presidential race was extremely tight nearly to the finish and left all concerned still battling for victory in national parliamentary elections scarcely a month away on June 10 and 17.

In fact, the results of those legislative contests might be the real decider of the path the country will follow during the new president’s term because they could finish in a U.S.-style situation with the head of the nation facing a legislature his party does not control.

In the presidential totals Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the right-of-center Union for a Popular Movement party, (UMP) and a former Interior Minister in the outgoing government, wound up more than six points ahead of his rival, Ségolène Royal, candidate of the left-of-center Socialist Party.

Sarkozy finished with an estimated 53.2 percent of the vote and Royal with 46.8.  He had outpaced her by the same roughly six percentage points in a first electoral round on April 22 which narrowed down the initial field of presidential hopefuls from 12 to two finalists.

The final vote totals for both tours reached record levels with well more than 80 percent of the country’s 44.5 million registered voters turning up at the urns. 

During the months-long electoral campaign Royal promoted a program essentially of more state protection and assistance in the social area to deal with heavy unemployment. Sarkozy urged less dependence on the State and more on free-market forces to get France’s troubled economy back on the move.   

Highlight of the week of frenetic campaigning that preceded the final vote was a long-awaited television debate between the two finalists, an event watched by some 20 million spectators, essentially half of the French voting public.

In that face-off,  Royal, 53, trailing in the polls and needing to put to rest the impression that, as a woman, she couldn’t survive a face-off with Sarkozy, 52, put aside her carefully cultivated sweetness and light campaign image to launch an almost non-stop series of pugnacious attacks on her rival.  Among other things she accused him of brutality and immorality and dire responsibility for virtually all the shortcomings of the outgoing government of which he had been a member

Sarkozy, on the other hand, carefully muted his usual but often off-putting, hard-edge image. He remained visibly calm and constantly rattled Royal with questions about exactly how her proposed massive increases in government aid programs, despite their undeniably good intentions, would be financed and put in place.

Sarkozy’s strategy worked because opinion polls after the debate unanimously turned in his favor as did the final election result.

Normally a candidate’s victory in the presidential race leads voters in legislative elections that follow to give their presidential choice’s party a parliamentary majority.

This year’s presidential campaign was so bitterly contested between the nation’s right- and left-wing political forces, however, that the normal pattern cannot be guaranteed.

In fact, the presidential results were barely announced before Royal and her losing left-wing camp started menacing a major effort to achieve a blocking or impeding majority in the parliamentary elections.  Those legislatives would be, said one of her spokesmen, simply the “third round” of the presidentials.

For the moment, however, the major unknown in the legislatives is which way will turn the 18.6  percent of the electorate, nearly seven million voters, who cast their ballots in the first eliminating round of the presidentials for centrist candidate François Bayrou, 55, a former Education Minister and President of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) party. 

Bayrou, whose party normally leaned more to the right than to the left of the political spectrum, came in third in the first presidential tour and just missed making it to the finals.

He has, however, announced the formation of a new party, the Democratic Movement (MD) that will present candidates in every legislative electoral district in the hope of  forming a decisive third-force that might align with the right or with the left on any given issue in the new parliament.

Both Sarkozy and Royal still have to win over the majority of Bayrou’s following, a hefty 6.9 million voters, to achieve their goals and only the legislatives will reveal if they have done that.

How will her presidential defeat affect loser Royal and her left-wing supporters.? Hard to say.  After Sarkozy’s victory she kept up a brave image and urged her followers to continue battling with her in order to achieve victory in the future.  

That, however, will be an uphill battle.  Her Socialist party had pinned its presidential hopes on her but she was their candidate, not their leader.  Even though her companion, François Holland, the father of her four children, is Secretary General of the Socialist party, Royal herself holds no party office.

In addition, she ran her campaign deliberately as a free-wheeling contender who would support the party line when it suited her but who wouldn’t be bound by it if it didn’t.  She even insisted pointedly that she was not the candidate of the Socialist party but was a candidate of all French citizens.

That attitude was accepted grudgingly at first by much of the party’s traditional leadership—often termed the party’s “elephants—but, when Royal proved to be a brilliant campaigner, they fell in line behind her, although rarely with fervor.

It took scarcely an hour from the announcement of Sarkozy’s victory, however before her own Socialist colleagues and militants of the other more left-wing parties that fielded candidates in the first round but also supported her grudgingly in the second to start laying the blame for their collective defeat on both Royal and Holland.

Months of left-wing and particularly Socialist party soul searching certainly lie ahead.

More important is the question of how Sarkozy’s victory will affect France on the home front and in the foreign arena.

After the television debate which failed to turn the tide for her, Royal continued her denigration campaign to the last minute with even sharper attacks on Sarkozy, linking him derogatorily to U.S. President George W. Bush and warning that his election would lead to authoritarianism, division and violence in the country.

Sarkozy dismissed her outburst as bad humor because of her sinking opinion poll figures. Others pointed out that, in contrast to the beatific stance she had cultivated during her campaign, such recriminatory tactics perfectly fitted the image of many of her associates who found her always difficult to work with.

In any event, her warnings about the violence that might follow a Sarkozy victory quickly were criticized as virtually a call to make that violence happen and cast a dark cloud on the immediate post-election horizon.

Is that violence likely to occur?  There are no guarantees but except for some predictable demonstrations and scuffles with police in the  relatively immediate aftermath of the announcement of Sarkozy’s election, the odds are against it.   Would-be tourists to France normally shouldn’t have to worry.

It is true that Sarkozy’s tough talk and promises of dealing sternly with delinquents when he was Interior Minister did help fan the flames of massive, often violent street demonstrations in the autumn of 2005. But most of the mayors of the areas involved, particularly the Paris suburbs, said they weren’t expecting a repeat performance.

For one thing, Sarkozy’s final vote totals made his victory democratically incontestable. In addition, the nation’s 84 percent first round electoral turnout was a refreshing sign of really participative democracy in the country. Many of those voters were young first timers who had decided to air their protests at the ballot box rather than in the streets as many had done in 2005.  The fact that they had their say, even if the result displeased them, apparently took a lot of the steam out of the street protest movement.

In addition, if there is one thing the French enjoy more than protesting it is their sacrosanct vacation periods.

Major organized demonstrations rarely occur during summer vacation time in France. Many high schools and colleges are out already. Students are dispersed. Families are on or about to be on vacation and it is harder to arouse opposition during parliamentary elections which involve many candidates than it is during the presidentials when protesting focus can be turned on one person, in this case, Sarkozy.

How will Sarkozy’s  ascension affect France on the home front where unemployment, housing shortages, diminished buying power, sluggish economic growth and security problems are of major concern?

All newly elected presidents ride to power on a wave of promises to tackle and correct just such problems. Few succeed but Sarkozy has a dogged streak that virtually guarantees a determined try.  In particular, he has promised a major push to bring France’s demoralizing 8.3 percent unemployment rate down below five percent, the level generally accepted as full employment, by the end of his term.  Time will tell.

In addition, he stressed, in his victory statements on election night his intention to be a President of all French citizens, not just those of his own right-of-center political formation, to try to deal with all their concerns and to open up his new government to participation of representatives of the center and even of the left of the political spectrum.  Commendable program. Not easy to accomplish. But his intention to try is not in doubt.

How will his victory affect France’s action in the international arena?

There Americans can breathe a bit easier than they would have been able to do if Royal, who frequently used anti-American rhetoric to please her essentially left-wing political base, had been elected.

A major criticism levelled by Royal and her followers against Sarkozy and which always plays well in France was the charge that he was pro-American.  In essence he is, but not in a servile way and France’s support for American policies and initiatives during his presidency cannot be guaranteed across the board.

He makes no secret of his admiration for America’s work ethic and basically democratic institutions. He has met with U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington and has insisted that France and the United States are great nations and traditional allies who need to cooperate. 

But he maintains, as did Chirac, that France retains its right to disagree on certain issues, Iraq first and foremost.  He will, as is the United States, be more sympathetic to Israel than was his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, 74, who will turn over the keys of office to Sarkozy on May 16 after 12 years on the job.

He is, however, adamantly opposed to the idea of Turkish entry into the European community, a prospect supported by the United States and Chirac

Down the line he wants to re-open the door to revisions of the European Union’s constitution that will strengthen its ability to function as a political entity capable of dealing with the United States on an equal footing without necessarily, as Chirac did constantly, urging it to act as a counterweight to American global power.

He wants to urge the European Union to be more protective of its members economies, in particular by instituting taxes on goods coming to Europe from countries that don’t adhere to the Kyoto treaty on environmental protection—read the U.S.  

He has indicated that in his presidency France may decide it has sufficiently done its duty and eventually withdraw from Afghanistan the roughly 1000 French troops still serving there along with U.S. forces under the banner of the NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance

In the immediate aftermath of the elections Sarkozy has said he will take some time off in relative seclusion perhaps with just a few close advisors simply to allow himself a period of reflection before assuming his presidential duties.

To avoid any impression of a presidential office shared by two men at the same time, he let it be known that he would not appear with Chirac during the sitting President’s final national ceremony, the May 8 ceremonies commemorating the end of World War II.

Once he assumes his duties on may 16, however, he has indicated that he will waste no time trying to keep the reformist promises he made during the campaign.

Much has been readied in advance and Sarkozy is expected to name a Prime Minister and set in place a new government by May 20, convoke the new parliament immediately after the final legislative elections June 17 and present it with a program to vote into effect so dense with new measures that the newly elected deputies will have to  kiss much of their summer vacation period goodbye.

While his predecessor Jacques Chirac tended often to soften his policies to avoid electoral problems or social confrontation, Sarkozy probably will be more inclined to persist in trying to ram through his programs despite such difficulties.

That will not be easy to do in France. Previsions for the legislative elections give Sarkozy’s UMP party a chance for 37 percent of the seats and Royal’s Socialists 33.  Estimators figure that centrist political formations like that of Bayrou will win 15 percent of the places with extreme right formations getting eight percent and those of the extreme left two percent. Some five percent will go to various smaller groups.

If the forecasts prove correct it means that not only Royal’s Socialists and other left-of-center formations will have to seek significant legislative votes if they want a voice in government policies.  Sarkozy’s backers, even though he won the Presidential election, will have to do the same.

Whichever way the legislative elections turn out, however, France clearly has embarked on a new path and a new leadership style.  Where that will lead remains to be seen but one thing is certain.  The road will be bumpy.