Long trail of errors makes Sarkozy least-loved leader

In May 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy seized the presidency with both hands, radiant with a victory that rewarded his campaign vows to ease the brakes on France's slowcoach economy and take the whip to the country's sleazy political elite.

Today, with less than two years left on his five-year term, Sarkozy has become the most unloved President in the 50-year history of France's Fifth Republic, disapproved by between two-thirds and three-quarters of voters.

To the astonishment of many, his once flawless control of the French political scene seems to have evaporated.

His Government is in turmoil, with the departure last week of two ministers in a row over abuse of public funds. A scandal involving alleged slush money provided by Liliane Bettencourt, heiress to the €17 billion ($30.4 billion) L'Oreal cosmetics fortune, threatens a third minister, Eric Woerth, who's in charge of Sarkozy's overhaul of the pension system.

The dirt now threatens to wash up at the doorsteps of the Elysee presidential palace itself.

An online publication, Mediapart, says Sarkozy illegally received cash-stuffed envelopes from Bettencourt in the past, when he was mayor of the upper-class Paris suburb of Neuilly. Despite the Elysee's angry denials and media counter-attack, for many the man who promised a clean pair of hands is now himself tainted.

Analysts poring over Sarkozy's slump see a long trail of mistakes, many of them rooted in the President's mercurial nature, love of glitz and fondness for the company of the mega-rich.

Doubts about Sarkozy's judgment were first sown on the very night of his election triumph, when Sarkozy hosted a celebratory bash at Fouquet's, the watering hole of the rich on the Champs-Elysees, attended by France's wealthiest industrialists.

He and his then wife, Cecilia, were subsequently flown to Malta by billionaire media tycoon Vincent Bollore, who entertained them aboard his yacht. The pair returned to a sumptuous red-carpet inauguration that drew parallels with the Cannes movie festival.

The flashiness, fuelled further by Sarkozy's divorce and remarriage to supermodel Carla Bruni, stirred unease in a country where egalitarianism is ingrained.

The Bettencourt affair "has revived all those negative images", said Jerome Fourquet of the opinion poll firm IFOP. "It is serious, because it comes at a time when the Government is asking the people to make sacrifices in the shape of pension reform or budgetary austerity."

To little surprise, the far-right National Front is on the comeback trail as unhappy supporters who plumped for Sarkozy in 2007 return to the fold.

An arguably bigger mistake by Sarkozy has been his handling of the economy, where he has looked both incompetent and inconsistent.

Instead of using his political capital wisely, by getting painful reforms out of the way in the early months and reaping the benefits later, his changes were mild, sidestepped or delayed.

France's worsening budget deficit went ignored, and it is only now, after Sarkozy went on a borrowing spree to keep the economy afloat after the 2008 financial crisis, that the problem is being tackled.

Under pressure from Germany, Sarkozy has promised to bring the deficit, set to be a stunning 8 per cent of GDP this year, to below the European Union's threshold of 3 per cent by 2013.

He is gambling on a combination of spending restraints - the word "austerity" is never used - and higher tax receipts to avert the risk of unrest. But many economists see the predictions, based on growth of 2.5 per cent, as way too optimistic.

Beset by a sour political mood and constrained by a sick economy, Sarkozy has few options right now.

His best bet, say some observers, is to announce a Government reshuffle next Tuesday when, by tradition, the President addresses the nation before Bastille Day.

Political life resumes in September after the long holidays and the pensions overhaul, already the trigger for two nationwide protests this year, will be put on the table.

By reshuffling now - and ditching Woerth - Sarkozy will look as if he is reacting to the Bettencourt scandal.

But delaying the reshuffle means leaving his discredited Government adrift for another two months, heightening the risk that the scandal will deepen and worsening disaffection in his Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party.

"We are stuck in a crisis. There needs to be a reshuffle, and a fast one," said Marie-Anne Montchamp, a UMP lawmaker.