Sarkozy: should he stay or should he go?

| The Times

11/04/2012 13:14

Sarkozy: should he stay or should he go?

Emanuelle Savarit and Axelle Lemaire

Published at 12:01AM, April 11 2012

Two British-based candidates in Frances presidential election give their view on President Sarkozy
Emanuelle Savarit: A man of action with the nerve to take on the public sector For the past five years Nicolas Sarkozy has shown that he has the wiliness, motivation and energy to solve Frances problems. He is the first President to succeed in reforming public pensions. While most French voters understood that, without reform, pensions would be unaffordable, Mr Sarkozy actually managed to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62. France is well known for its strikes. Mr Sarkozy wanted to stop strikers in the transport sector holding passengers to ransom. Thanks to his reforms, a minimum service must now be provided during strikes. Nobody would have imagined that it was possible to reform higher education French universities are a sanctuary for socialist and communist militants. Any attempt at reform automatically leads to a succession of strikes, complaints and talk of revolution. But the Sarkozy Government has made all 83 French universities independent, giving them greater freedoms in terms of recruitment and finance. In 2008 Mr Sarkozy was President of the EU Council of Ministers when the financial crisis hit Europe. His leadership through the storm is well recognised internationally. By bailing out French banks, he allowed the economy to pull through without sacrificing the French social model or making any civil servants redundant. His joint action with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, helped to save Europe from domino-style bankruptcy. At the 2010 and 2011 summits he proposed regulating the global financial system to protect citizens from financial excess. He also suggested standardising worldwide agricultural and food policy to protect the poor from food price rises. And in 2010 France
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Sarkozy: should he stay or should he go? | The Times

11/04/2012 13:14

and Britain signed a defence co-operation pact, the advantage of which was seen during the intervention in Libya. Now that financial markets seriously doubt the sustainability of European sovereign debts, it is more necessary than ever to clean up public finances and reduce Frances dependence on foreign creditors. For Mr Sarkozy economic consistency is a must. He is the first candidate to speak out on the need for growth and competitiveness. Nicolas Sarkozy is the only credible candidate for a France forte. Emanuelle Savarit, an entrepreneur who has lived in London for 18 years, is the candidate for Sarkozys UMP party Axelle Lemaire (pictured): Aggressive and divisive, he has never followed through France does not work enough, I am hostile to welfare, No one is forced to come to France . . . Is this just a bad flashback? Nicolas Sarkozys Letter to the French People, issued last week, recycles the same old soundbites, but without the fake freshness of his candidacy in 2007. But French citizens who want answers to problems such as unemployment, overcrowded classrooms and how to pay their bills will find little in his manifesto. The Presidents vague proposals are not worthy of a systemic crisis that is making inequality worse and undermining the French values of liberty, equality and solidarity. Mr Sarkozy has left France poorer: unemployment has risen by more than a million since 2007, public debt has nearly doubled in ten years, and we have lost our triple-A credit rating. This incompetence has put paid to the clich that French conservatives are fiscally more responsible than the Left. The government approach has been muddled: a combination of tax breaks for high earners and property owners, tax exemptions for large companies, new taxes on smaller businesses and a VAT rise. Mr Sarkozy has not followed through on reform, whether its incomplete and unfunded university reform or tinkering with pensions. After five years its a poor result. With the country in crisis, he spent days talking about halal meat. The son of immigrants himself, he has belittled foreigners and immigrants but to no avail. The leading candidate among 18-25 year-olds is Marine Le Pen, of the Front National. Mr Sarkozy is the most divisive politician to hold high office under the Fifth Republic. His micromanagement and personality-driven style may be good for an aggressive party chief but not for a complex nation such as France. By contrast, Franois Hollande is a calm, moderate, modern social democrat. His record as a consensus builder is likely to reassure France and Europe. His programme focuses on stability and growth with long-term investment in education, health and infrastructure,
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Sarkozy: should he stay or should he go? | The Times

11/04/2012 13:14

and a target for getting the deficit under control. He also believes that fiscal austerity alone is no basis for Europes future. France deserves a new start. I hope my fellow citizens will say a suffit to Mr Sarkozy. We have been lead by a politician who never broke out of his mould as a candidate. Now it is time to elect a president. Axelle Lemaire, the candidate of the French Socialist Party, is a lawyer who has lived in London for ten years

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