Nicolas Sarkozy prepares for local election backlash

Source: Guardian

Nicolas Sarkozy is braced for his last political test before next year's bruising presidential race in local elections this weekend which are expected to expose France's disillusionment with its ruling class.

Half of France will vote on Sunday 27 March to appoint about 2,000 local councillors in cantons, the smallest segment in France's labyrinthine local administration. But the first-round vote todaywas expected to show abstention hitting record levels of over 50%. By 5pm, there had been a turn-out of only 36%, low for a local vote.

One year before the presidential vote, local representatives of Sarkozy's ruling rightwing UMP party are so fearful of a backlash against Sarkozy that many have left the party logo off election material and beseeched party leaders not to canvas on their behalf. At one meeting last week in Le Raincy, a rightwing town surrounded by the neglected highrise ghettos that saw France's worst riots in 2005, the higher education minister, Valérie Pécresse, tried to rally the troops by quoting Winston Churchill. She blamed the financial crisis for the nation's pessimism, arguing that Sarkozy was still the best hope for the 2012 presidential race. "When a country goes through a storm it needs a captain to step up to the bridge," she said. Imploring candidates to remind voters that Sarkozy had succeeded in changing France, she cited only three reforms, the raising of the pension age, an overhaul of universities and compulsory minimum service on public transport on strike days, which means France can no longer be paralysed by industrial action.

The Socialist party hopes to distract attention from its own infighting over who it will choose as presidential candidate and capitalise on the mood against Sarkozy. Before the military invention against Libya, the president was festering at his lowest approval ratings, 29%, with two polls showing him knocked out of the first-round presidential race by the extreme-right National Front.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/20/sarkozy-prepares-local-election-backlash