Politics: France: Sarkozy makes important tactical win, but will it backfire?

France will have an election for President on April 22, and with recent developments that vote will be the first round involving what at the moment appears to include 12 candidates. Instead of knocking one out of three candidates from the list, now 10 will be deleted for the second-round vote on May6,2k7. The wider range of choice for the first round will make a large difference to the outcome of the second, apparently.

The foregoing important news regarding the upcoming French election is reported by Belfast Telegraph's John Lichfield, "Twelve to contest French presidential race" (Mar17,2k7). Most significantly, the leading candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, presently France's Minister of the Interior, would stand to hold the votes of his own supporters, placing him first in their preferences for President. These are, by and large, members of his party, Union for a Popular Movement (UMP, using the French word order) which is described as "center r+t."

But if there were only three parties' candidates on the ballot, both the far left and the far r+t would be unable to participate in the election (a real source of greivance and resentment in itself), but also Sarkozy's opponent for the second round could possibly be the winner, particularly the woman representing the Socialists, Mdme. Segolene Royal. The scenario painted to explain that potential eventuality is one in which all the far left particles call their supporters to back her, while the far r+t voters simply fail to participate in the vote of the second round.

Lichfield doesn't indulge in the speculation I tried to summarize, but he gives the factual backround for it.

French electors voting on 22 April will have a choice between 12 presidential candidates, including three "mainstream" figures, two representatives of the far right, one green, an "official" Communist and three Trotskyists.

Few countries in the world offer their electors such a wide range of candidates, especially so many marginally differing flavours of the far left. When the deadline for submitting formal applications expired last night, a dozen candidates - eight men and four women - appeared to have met the formal entry requirements. A final list will be announced next week.

Three or possibly four of the candidates have a serious hope of qualifying for the second round. Only the two leading vote-winners in the first round go forward to a run-off on 6 May.

To reach the ballot paper, a candidate must produce 500 endorsements from elected local or national politicians - a hurdle which has proved harder to jump this year. In the last presidential election in 2002, there were 16 candidates in the first round. Large parties have made a concerted effort to fence out the smaller candidates this time.

Only two weeks ago, the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen raised doubts about his ability to produce 500 signed endorsement forms. He made it on Wednesday, two days early, with some help from the candidate of the centre-right governing party, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Last week, M. Sarkozy urged non-affiliated village and small-town mayors of the centre right to endorse M. Le Pen - as well as far-left candidates - to prove that the system was "open and democratic".

M. Sarkozy, who leads in the opinion polls, also had tactical considerations.

If M. Le Pen had been absent from the ballot, his vote - 12 to 13 per cent according to the opinion polls, but probably higher - might have been denied to M. Sarkozy in the second round. The other candidate of the far " nationalist" right, Philippe de Villiers, assembled his 500 signatures easily but is given, at most, 2 per cent of the national vote.

The crowd of candidates on the far left reflects tribal divisions, ideological nuances and personal hatreds, more than genuine electoral support. One of the mysteries of the opinion polls this year is the apparent "collapse" of the potential vote of the wider left. Even the candidate of the once-powerful French Communist Party, Marie-George Buffet, is forecast to take only about 2 per cent of the national vote. The veteran Trotskyist candidate, Arlette Laguiller (of Lutte Ouvriere), on her sixth and final campaign, is given only just over 2 per cent in most polls.

Olivier Besancenot, the young postman representing the other main Trotskyist faction, Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, has about the same level of support. The third Trotskyist, Gérard Schivardi of the Workers Party, is likely to score less than 1 per cent. Efforts to agree a single candidate of the far left fell apart months ago.

The quest for the top two places in the run-off has developed into a three-way race between M. Sarkozy (with 27-29 per cent in the latest polls), the Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal (with 23-25 per cent) and the surging centrist candidate, François Bayrou (with 21-23 per cent).

But pollsters warn M. Le Pen, who shocked France and the world by reaching the second round in 2002, should not be discounted.

A fourway 1st round could possibly produce, as "Sarko"'s solo opponent either the centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF)'s canddidate Francois Bayrou. Or the far r+t, anti-immigrant National Front's Le Pen. Neither the combined far and near Left, it is assumed, would allow Sarko go down to the Far R+t, but the Left could shift massively to support Bayrou against Sarko. Add to that a certain margin of the Le Pen vote who conceivably would support a centrist just to give Sarko and the UMP a good whack, and voila!, Bayrou's the new President of France. But who would Bayrou appoint as Prime Minister to form a cabinet? Sego? Sarko?