French candidate for the 2011 Socialist party primary elections Francois Hollande, left, waves after the Party announced his victory during the second round of the Socialist Party's primary vote, in Paris, Sunday Oct. 16, 2011. France's Socialists and sympathizers on Sunday are choosing their nominee for next year's presidential election, an expected showdown with embattled conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French candidate for the 2011 Socialist party primary elections Francois Hollande, left, waves after the Party announced his victory during the second round of the Socialist Party's primary vote, in Paris, Sunday Oct. 16, 2011. France's Socialists and sympathizers on Sunday are choosing their nominee for next year's presidential election, an expected showdown with embattled conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French candidate for the 2011 Socialist party primary elections Francois Hollande gestures as he delivers a speech after the Party announced his victory during the second round of the Socialist Party's primary vote, in Paris, Sunday Oct. 16, 2011. France's Socialists and sympathizers on Sunday are choosing their nominee for next year's presidential election, an expected showdown with embattled conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French candidate for the 2011 Socialist party primary elections Francois Hollande, left, waves after the Party announced his victory during the second round of the Socialist Party's primary vote, in Paris, Sunday Oct. 16, 2011. France's Socialists and sympathizers on Sunday are choosing their nominee for next year's presidential election, an expected showdown with embattled conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French candidate for the 2011 Socialist party primary elections Francois Hollande, left, hugs a socialist militant after the Party announced his victory during the second round of the Socialist Party's primary vote, in Paris, Sunday Oct. 16, 2011. France's Socialists and sympathizers on Sunday are choosing their nominee for next year's presidential election, an expected showdown with embattled conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy.(AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French winner candidate for the 2011 Socialist party primary elections Francois Hollande makes his speech just after the Party announced his victory during the second round of the Socialist Party's primary vote, in Paris, Sunday Oct. 16, 2011. France's Socialists and sympathizers on Sunday are choosing their nominee for next year's presidential election, an expected showdown with embattled conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy. (AP Photo/Yoan Valat)
PARIS (AP) ? Four-and-a-half years ago, France got a leader dubbed the "hyperpresident" ? a pro-American, free-market politician who flouted tradition and went jogging on his first day in office.
This spring, the Socialist Party's strongest potential competitor to conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy became the target of sex-crimes accusations that grabbed headlines across the world, and focused attention on Dominique Strauss-Kahn's history of infidelities and behavior toward women.
Now, the French appear to be in the mood for a change.
On Sunday, the Socialists nominated Francois Hollande, an affable, soft-spoken and witty former longtime party boss, as their candidate for what is likely to be a presidential election showdown next May against the divisive Sarkozy.
In recent months, Hollande has said he wants to be a "normal" president. Opinion polls suggest the strategy may be working, showing Hollande is far more popular than the vastly unpopular incumbent.
When asked "Why you?" in an interview published in Le Parisien newspaper Saturday, Hollande first answered: "Because I can beat Nicolas Sarkozy."
Hollande, a bespectacled 57-year-old career politician, has built his reputation as a manager and consensus-builder more than a visionary. He's virtually unknown outside France, and critics say he has limited international experience to head this nuclear-armed nation.
Sarkozy's backers went on the counteroffensive on Monday, trying to depict Hollande as wishy-washy, lackluster and unprincipled.
"What do people say about Francois Hollande? They say he's skillful; they never say he's courageous," Jean-Francois Cope, who leads Sarkozy's UMP party, told reporters. "Now, he will face the question: what is it to take a courageous decision? It's taking a decision that risks being unpopular but is good for the country."
Sarkozy has had no shortage of bold decisions ? not all perceived as good for France ? and he has definitely grown unpopular: His popularity ratings have hovered around 30 percent for months, after winning with 53 percent of the vote in the 2007 presidential race.
Still, with France's economy struggling and international competition stiff, many observers say Hollande will need to project a stronger image to counter Sarkozy. He's recently taken to uttering the word "strong" or its derivatives.
"This victory confers on me the strength and the legitimacy to prepare for the great appointment with the presidential race," said Hollande, known as good on the stump and a quick-witted debater, in Sunday's victory speech.
Hollande is a lawmaker in the National Assembly and the governor of the central Correze region ? the same political backyard as conservative former President Jacques Chirac ? and led the Socialist party from 1997 to 2008.
Critics say his resume is otherwise thin: He has never run a government ministry, has limited international recognition, and made his name as leader of a party that was weakened and badly fractured during his tenure.
Hollande led the party in 2002 when its top national politician, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, embarrassingly failed to qualify for the presidential runoff. The Socialists split badly three years later over the proposed EU Constitution, which French voters rejected in a referendum.
Hollande's former partner Segolene Royal ? the mother of his four children ? was the Socialists' last presidential nominee. Their relationship unraveled during the 2007 campaign, and they later separated. She ran again this year, but lost badly in the first phase of the primary on Oct. 9.
Hollande, who once quipped that he dislikes the rich, sparked a political furor in the run-up to the 2007 election by advocating a tax hike for those French who earned over euro4,000 ($5,500) a month.
"He must not like himself," Sarkozy quipped then in a TV debate.
Hollande's program calls for reversing cuts in education by Sarkozy's government, a new work contract to encourage companies to hire young people, and focus on reducing France's high state budget deficit. It says little about international affairs, other than calling for an unspecified "pact" with Germany, the EU's economic engine, to spur on the now-troubled European project.
In 2008, Hollande supported Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, while admitting that such an endorsement could dent Obama's image in the U.S. electorate given the way some American voters regard socialism.
Hollande has a topflight educational pedigree, with degrees from the reputed HEC business school, Sciences Po political institute, and the finishing school for French political and management elites known as ENA.
His strategy, in part, is to cast himself as the anti-Sarkozy. The macho president made his name as a hard-as-nails interior minister who led a crackdown on crime for much of the 2000s.
Early this year, the most anticipated Socialist front-runner had been Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund. His political career all but ended in May when he was jailed briefly in the United States after a New York hotel maid accused him of rape. Prosecutors later dropped the case, but Strauss-Kahn's reputation and presidential ambitions crashed.
A popular French satirical TV show, Les Guignols de l'Info, had recently depicted Hollande as a sort of goofy simpleton with a dopey laugh, a marked contrast to its scheming, self-important puppet of Sarkozy.
Political wags this year noted that Hollande's weight loss and new use of frameless eyeglasses coincided with his rise in the polls ? as if the makeover helped his image.
Sarkozy and Hollande have squared off electorally before: Each led their party's list for the 1999 European parliament elections.
In a round-table debate ahead of that vote, Sarkozy and Hollande sparred. At one point Sarkozy said his rival "is not an intimate friend, in any way ? notably because our political convictions are different."
Retorted Hollande, tartly: "And doesn't plan on becoming one."
Though turnout was dismal, the Socialists handily won that 1999 vote, and Sarkozy headed for a three-year spell in the political wilderness.
A quintessential political survivor, Sarkozy must never be underestimated, some on the left say.
"Those who think that it is enough to say bad things about President Sarkozy to get elected are badly mistaken," said Jean-Luc Melenchon, who heads a small hard-left party, on France-Info radio. "Our country deserves better than collective hate."
__
Associated Press writer Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.
Associated Presselton john clint eastwood modern warfare 3 hawthorne mcafee mcafee t.i.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.