Riccardo Brizzi - 12/ 2011

Four months to go till the first round of the French presidential elections – fixed for 22nd April 2012 – and the run-up has taken a new turn from previous appointments. The first departure from past precedent is the background of crisis hanging over the campaign. A dire economic situation, pressure on the sovereign debt and a struggling Euro place the whole competition on a plane of precariousness. The worry is not just that Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch have announced they are withdrawing their “triple A” rating, but above all the prospect of full-scale speculation against French securities. To be fair, the electoral campaigns of 1974, 1981 and 2007 fell likewise at moments of economic difficulty, though without the risk of sudden collapse bedevilling the whole present situation and endangering the electoral applecart. The second novelty is the current head of State’s waning popularity. For the first time since election of the President of the Republic by universal suffrage was introduced (1962), an outgoing president is not the favourite in the running for the succession. Just after the first major pre-electoral ‘happening’ – at the Toulon Zénith Oméga on December 1st – and before even officially a candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy was unable to invert the trend that has already favoured the socialist candidate these last months (after the socialist primaries of 9th and 16th October, the name of François Hollande emerged). He is barely ahead of Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National. The Président’s difficulties have been set down to a mixture of factors: the economic crisis, failure to break with the style of his predecessor Chirac, unwise handling of his private life (especially at the start of his term). One way or another, it is already a campaign of surprises, beginning with the sensational exit from the running by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, once tipped as hot favourite. Lastly, the competition is made all the harder to predict by the plethora of candidates for this presidency – fifteen to date. It will not be until March 19th 2012 that the Constitutional Council officialises the candidacies. To become a candidate, one has to receive official backing from at least 500 “elect” – meaning national and European MPs, mayors and general councillors. But already the crowded lists gainsay the Gaullist dictum whereby universal suffrage designating the President of the Republic would compact the French people around their top representative. Bit by bit, the presidentials have turned into a safety valve for extremism and disappointees of every hue, penalised by the double-round first-past-the-post electoral system of general elections. Confirmation of this came in 2002 when the so-called “plural” left split up and ‘blew’ Jospin’s hopes, enabling Le Pen to leapfrog the bi-polar dynamics. If the 29th May 2005 plebiscite on Europe is anything to go by, the same trend now applies to referenda. With four months to go, the only certain thing is that Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande will have plenty of company as they line up to start the electoral campaign. Over on the left, the two Trotsky-ite candidates, Nathalie Artaud (Lutte ouvrière) and Philippe Potou (Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste), are virtually invisible, as is the leader of Mouvement républicain citoyen, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, who looks unable to revive the splendour of 2002 when he came in sixth at the first ballot with 5.33% of the vote. The only left-wing candidates who may aspire to reaching the 3% threshold are the winner of the “écologiste” primaries, Eva Joly, (who is unlikely to pick up more than the hard-line environmentalist niche vote) and the Front de Gauche leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon who is being tipped to receive about 6%, given his communications skills and the smoothness with which he has taken up a Eurosceptical stand. For all the wealth of candidates, the left lacks figures capable of siphoning off any significant support from François Hollande: the socialist candidate’s road to election day thus seems fairly smooth. By contrast, Nicolas Sarkozy’s path looks far less plain-sailing. To right and left he is hemmed by vigorous opposition. Marine Le Pen on the extreme right has been tipped to pool 18-21% of the vote (though the Front national electorate is known to be the most fickle); she occupies that whole political segment unrivalled, leaving no scope for possible outsiders, whether sovereignists like Nicolas Dupont-Aignan or influential lobby figures like the Chasse, pêche, nature et traditions movement candidate, Frédéric Nihous. The centre area is in particular ferment. The rock and benchmark remains François Bayrou who, after his 2007 performance (18.5% of the ballot), has long been out in the wilderness but seems capable, come presidentials, of rising phoenix-like from his own ashes. Although for several weeks now he has been on the up (the polls put him at around 10-11%), he is unlikely to equal his 2007 first-round feat; what is more likely is that he may play a central role with his main sights on the second ballot where he just might be ‘pig in the middle’ who picks up electors. Sarkozy is also worried by the unusual proliferation of candidacies from among the moderates, the only relief being Jean-Louis Borloo’s withdrawal. Taken individually, the candidatures of Dominique de Villepin and Christine Boutin (who both supported Sarkozy in 2007) or Hervé Morin and Corinne Lepage (who supported Bayrou last time) count for very little (only ex-prime minister Villepin may expect to beat the 3% barrier), but taken together they form a distinct breakaway from the centrist galaxy around Sarkozy, whose government they accuse of playing up social tensions in French society and going along with extreme right-wing pressure unduly. Though challenged on his own terrain and trailing in the ratings (the pollsters put him 3 or even 5 points behind Hollande), Sarkozy nonetheless looks capable of reaching the second ballot. We thus seem set for the classic and expected duel between the two main French political camps and their leaders. What makes the outcome unpredictable is really the unique background to the contest: the gravity of the economic, financial and banking crisis, the influence this will have on the calendar and the debates among candidates. These factors could upset all the prognoses for a competition that bids fair to be quite different from past precedent. The crisis is likely to narrow the ideological distance between the two candidates’ platforms. Both Sarkozy and Hollande will have to rally in defence of the French “triple A”; they can do little but promise budgetary rigour without penalising the weaker echelons of the population; and they will have to be seen to champion France’s interests in a Europe that is being more and more browbeaten by Germany. Unable to distinguish themselves on economic or social ground, one imagines they will sink to a personality clash, lowering the tone of an election campaign in which alternation, rather than alternatives, must be the most probable watchword.

Riccardo Brizzi
(University of Bologna)