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France

Sarkozy the humble fails to impress critics

France’s opposition parties slammed President Nicolas Sarkozy’s televised interview on Tuesday night. But new Defence Minister Alain Juppé declared that Sarkozy is “the only candidate” for his party and its allies.

Reuters
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Sarkozy is "disorientated" and "out of touch with the French people", Socialist leader Martine Aubry claimed on Wednesday, while the party’s former presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, scoffed at his claim that he has not yet decided whether to stand for reelection in 2012.

On the far right, Front National leader Marine Le Pen accused Sarkozy of performing an “exercise in modesty” after discovering that his “arrogance” annoys the public.

AFP / TF1

Most newspaper commentators seemed to be unimpressed.

But Juppé, who was brought into the government in Sunday’s reshuffle, stuck by the chief.

Sarkozy “is the only candidate from the right and the centre who can win in 2012 and the government and the [parliamentary] majority are there to help him”, he said.

In Tuesday’s television appearance Sarkozy insisted that he is open to ideas from both left and right, despite the departure – in most cases involuntary – of self-styled centrists and former left-wingers from his cabinet in the weekend's reshuffle.

The broadcast has been widely covered as an attempt to repair his pubic image as a domineering egotist.

Sarkozy remained calm as he defended his unpopular pension reform with carefully prepared facts and figures. And he fended off questions over the deportation of Roma with a counter-charge that the media were more alarmist over law and order than he has been.

But the president’s patience clearly became strained when taxed on allegations of corruption and dirty tricks.

Is it the job of “President of the Republic” to find out “if one your colleagues has lost his laptop or his moble or if they have been stolen”, Sarkozy snapped when asked about the apparent theft of computers and documents from journalists working on the Mediapart website and Le Point magazine, which have led to accusations that the president’s offices are spying on reporters.

Declaring that the new team will probably remain untouched until the end of his mandate, Sarkozy gave a hint of the policies he will pursue in the coming months:

Taxation: The controversial tax ceiling for the wealthy will be scrapped but so will the wealth tax; after consultation with unions and other interested parties, France’s taxation will be reformed to be more like the German system, he said, claiming that potential investors flee the country because of the tax burden on big earners and owners.

Osama bin Laden: Threats like those of the Al-Qaeda leader will not be allowed to dictate policy; the ban on the burka and other all-covering garments will stay in place because “we don’t want women shut up behind a prison, even if it is one of cloth”.

Islam and immigration: “If we don’t control immigration, we’re organising the collapse of our whole system of integration,” Sarkozy said. The Ministry of Immigration and National

Identity, whose name was criticised for its alleged tendency to chauvinism, vanished in the reshuffle but “if I have renounced the words ‘national identity’ because they gave rise to misunderstandings, I have not renounced the basic idea”; French Muslims must practice “an Islam of France not an Islam in France”.

G20: “We can no longer stay in this monetary mess … We need a new international monetary system,” said Sarkozy who took over leadership of the G20 developed nations’ club at the weekend, adding that financial transactions shoud be taxed to help “Africa and the poor countries”.

François Fillon: The prime minister kept his job because he is “the best”, said Sarokzy, perhaps hoping that Fillon, who was preferred to the president by 71 per cent of respondents in a Paris-Match opinion poll, will stick to what he’s good at in 2012 and thereafter.

Eric Woerth: The scandal-tainted outgoing Labour Minister Eric Woerth, who spearheaded the pensions reform, is 'fundamentally honest", Sarkozy said, but he had to go because his expected court appearances would have disrupted his work as a minister.

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