The Spoiler
France's Own Ralph Nader. Or Ross Perot.
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy are looking over their respective shoulders a great deal nowadays.
Why? Because of this:
François Bayrou, a centrist candidate who has emerged as a wild card in the French presidential election, saw his popularity climb Tuesday to its highest level yet, a day after he denounced the "perpetual wars" between the two main parties and promised a national unity government if he were elected.
The latest Ifop survey gave Bayrou 19 percent of the vote in the first round of the elections on April 22. Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the governing center-right party, was credited with 29 percent and Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate, had 25.5 percent. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front candidate, had 12 percent, with the rest divided among smaller parties.
In a sign that they were more concerned now about Bayrou's rise, the other candidates have started attacking his centrist platform as an attempt to deprive French voters of a clear choice.
But in a live broadcast Monday night, Bayrou said that his bid to overcome France's traditional partisan divide was the only way to tackle the country's problems.
"I would name a government that brings together abilities from different backgrounds," he said on a question and answer show before almost seven million viewers. "To get France out of its current crisis, you need to be able to make people from different political camps work together."
The story notes that Royal has suffered most from Bayrou's rise in the polls. As if an unpopular statist platform and a series of gaffes that have caused her to look quite unserious in the eyes of the French electorate are not enough burdens to carry, she must now suffer the indignity of having her coalition smashed to bits.