By Paul Taylor
PARIS Thu Apr 26, 2012 9:29am EDT
PARIS (Reuters) - To observe these individuals perform, you'd feel Francois Hollande has been currently France's leader as well as Nicolas Sarkozy ended up being an insurgent anxiously contending to help dislodge him.
Conventional roles were reversed within the final 10 times associated with a marathon election strategy around Europe's amount not one but two economy, a nuclear power along with U.N. Security Council fellow member - drastically on the good thing about Hollande, the Socialist challenger.
The subdued Sarkozy, a hyperactive player to the world and European stage pertaining to the last all 5 years, will be race about the region frenetically, cajoling far-right voters and escalating an adverse marketing versus his or her Socialist opponent.
Hollande, 57, your rank outsider any time he / she declared their candidacy a lot more than 12 months ago, will be actor's the statesman, self-confidently having foreign reports management meetings and placing released throughout calm, measured ring tones the way he or she ideas to be able to change Europe's fiscal lessons once, rather than if, he or she is victorious a May a few runoff.
Business frontrunners are schmoozing his potential ministers and also aides; ambassadors tend to be courting his / her insurance plan advisers; his envoys usually are making discreet calls around Brussels and also Berlin to prepare the surface with the mature workforce connected with European leaders whom declined in order to receive the Socialist being a candidate.
Hollande utilized your stagecraft from the presidency to get his announcement meeting upon Wednesday, speaking while in front of a new sober azure backdrop with the French and European flags furled powering his correct shoulder. Only the actual slogan "Now could be the period with regard to change" on the lectern signaled this individual had been nonetheless a applicant with the job.
"French residents tend not to interested in a leader getting into the political industry in order to resolve daily problems, he or she must mention values. Sarkozy provides never found myself in this particular role," claimed sociologist Jean-Francois Chantaraud, founder on the Odissee think-thank.
"Hollande, however, is talking about values in addition to dealing with the presidential mantle. He can be talking about attitudes and vision, rights plus equality, but this individual would not enter into that nitty-gritty involving how he can resolve problems," he said.
Sarkozy will be sticking with the particular playbook regarding his or her political expert Patrick Buisson, dividing the actual French with every rally into "real" workers and your "assisted", "Parisian elites" vs . "the people", those pleased with France's "Christian roots" as well as the rest.
As section of their strategy, your us president cited on prime-time television some sort of purported list of 700 mosques gonna promote Hollande along with said marked by controversy Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan was back up your Socialist. Muslim community commanders claimed there was clearly absolutely no this kind of number in addition to Ramadan, a Swiss citizen, waived having considered characteristics in the French poll.
LURCH TO RIGHT
Sarkozy's lurch to the right, voiced throughout increasingly virulent rhetoric, is actually aimed towards luring your 6.4 zillion voters which hired ballots last Sunday with regard to far-right anti-immigration campaigner Marine Le Pen, allowing her accurate documentation 18 percent score.
Buisson, a an old extreme-right classifieds editor, spelled away that strategy inside a remarkably candid interview using the New York Times publicized continue week, stating Sarkozy must embody "the attitudes associated with national identity."
"This time, this middle topic have been for you to become your candidate with borders, with the boundary of which protects," said Buisson.
Dangerously for Sarkozy, the particular very few view polls considered considering that the first round have remained stable, using Hollande controlling a 10-point lead on the incumbent, as in the event that Sarkozy's radicalization with the marketing campaign was only confirming voters inside their choice.
Sarkozy has at this point been able for you to alienate centrist candidate Francois Bayrou, whose 9.1 percent from the first-round vote might be very important when Sarkozy should be to include any kind of desire connected with getting up with Hollande.
Bayrou distanced themself out of the actual president in a good amenable cover letter getting in touch with pertaining to both equally job hopefuls to deny extreme conditions along with place an ending for the "violence" associated with politics, a phone which looked like primarily precise in the incumbent's confrontational style.
Courteous, joking and also a minor long-winded, Hollande can be plodding routinely for the completing line, such as the tortoise around Aesop's fable, even though Sarkozy dashes much like the hare, zigzagging instead of steering your continual course.
The Socialist features brushed out of Sarkozy's challenge for you to several television set debates between the rounds, noting of which the particular president acquired recognized just one controversy while in their 2007 selection campaign.
Hollande has attempted for you to surmount his don't have any with ministerial knowledge simply by imitating - almost clear of mimicry - the actual rhetoric and also actions with his mentor Francois Mitterrand, that governed France from 1981 to 1995.
Mitterrand aroused adulation when he / she contributed a united still left to be able to electricity throughout 1981 soon after twenty three ages in the political wilderness. His free-spending procedures induced your currency exchange crisis plus encouraged a plan U-turn soon after a couple years.
He went on to outfox a old-fashioned best minister in a time with power-sharing and was re-elected throughout 1988, just to leave workplace reviled by a lot of thanks to celebration sleaze scandals plus revelations about his ambivalent part for the duration of World War Two.
Yet the 30th house warming connected with Mitterrand's election this past year afforded rise for you to a good outpouring with kindness for that master tactician, exactly who perished around 1996.
Hollande offers utilized directly into that will nostalgia involving voters that identified having Mitterrand's provincial roots, his / her strong customs and his flexibility to help empathies using regular people. By contrast, Sarkozy seems to many, possibly inside his very own traditional camp, being impetuous, vulgar and unpresidential throughout his or her demeanor.
As this individual procedures the particular a finish series inside an more and more crazy campaign, this specific many divisive connected with presidents may well ponder your campaign slogan what is the best Mitterrand cruised for you to re-election inside 1988: "United France."
(Additional confirming by simply Elizabeth Pineau in addition to Geert de Clercq; Writing by Paul Taylor ; Editing by Geert De Clercq as well as Peter Graff )
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