Public yawns as politicians posture in run-up to poll

Nicolas Sarkozy. Photo / AP

In just less than two weeks, France holds elections that will determine who will run the world's fifth biggest economy and one of its eight declared nuclear powers. But any visitor to Paris would be hard-pressed to see much interest in the event.

In a country noted abroad for its bursts of upheaval, there is no sign of febrility - no chaotic rallies, no angry protests, no marches. Newspapers are putting sport and lifestyle back on the front pages after a splurge of election headlines. Even the election posters are largely undefaced.

The opinion poll firm Ifop, conducting a survey of the public mood every week, has charted a steady droop in enthusiasm. Since late January, the proportion of voters saying they were indifferent or uninterested in the election has risen from one in four to one in three. In lower-income groups, only one in two say they will bother to vote.

"What is very surprising is the drop in voting intentions since mid-March," said Ifop deputy boss Frederic Dabi. "At similar stages in previous elections, the number of people who said they intended to vote was on the increase."

Dabi blamed a mismatch between politicians and the public mood.

"The candidates are banging on about crime and immigration when the priorities for the public are unemployment and living standards."

But another reason could be that everything is so over-managed. The spin doctors have had five years in which to listen to the focus groups, fine-tune their presentations and bring in the applauding crowds which will make their champions look slick on the nightly news.

This US-style obsession with personalities rather than substance has stripped the campaign of spontaneity and cut-and-thrust. In fact occasional slips in the mask are making the buzz.

Amateur psychologists last week got a small treat when socialist challenger Francois Hollande teamed up on the campaign trail with his ex - the defeated 2007 candidate Segolene Royal, who is also the mother of his four children.

After their nasty bust-up five years ago, the two got back together for an evening in Rennes to push Hollande's bid for the Elysee presidential palace. Their body language was ample proof that time is not always a healer.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, so far, has gagged his sharp tongue and kept a tight control on the mannerisms - the fidgeting, eye-rolling and standing on tiptoes in a bid to look taller - that are a gift to his enemies. But he has made tongues wag by looking wan and dark-eyed.

"He looks like he swallowed a bad oyster on the way back from a funeral," the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine chortled. It revealed that a makeup artist called Marinahad been paid €37,000 ($59,000) in the 2007 elections to make him look tanned and groomed.

According to insiders, the media minders in the Socialist Party did a caca nerveux (politely translatable as "having a fit") last month when the leftwing daily Liberation published an unflattering picture of Hollande while he was in a train. With a bright back light and his glasses off, he looked bald and enfeebled, his eyes dead and his hands wrinkly, almost crocodilian.

Obsession with image has even extended to tree-huggers and communists. The Left Front's Jean-Luc Melenchon is the most remote candidate of all. He makes rock-star appearances at mass rallies, sometimes in a blaze of coloured spotlights and clouds of dry ice. After a rousing speech, he is hustled through the crowd to another gig by a wedge of escorts, making no contact with anyone.

As for the ecologists, there was dismay when their champion, Norwegian-born Eva Joly, suffered a fall on a cinema staircase and had to wear sunglasses to hide a black eye - a get-up that made her look like the shopaholic wife of a Latin American dictator.

None of the candidates is likely to garner more than 50 per cent of the vote in the first ballot on April 22, which means a run-off two weeks later.

Lagging behind Hollande, Sarkozy is itching for a one-on-one TV duel that, he contends, will show him to be the stronger and more incisive figure. But this is being resisted by the socialists, who want to keep Hollande in a managed showcase.

The closest TV viewers are likely to get to any kind of debate will be a "presidential special - words and acts" on Thursday and Friday. Each of the five main candidates will be questioned, one at a time, by a group of hand-picked journalists.

There will be no head-to-head stuff. In fact Sarkozy and Hollande will be quizzed on separate days.

And given that French journalists are notoriously accommodating when it comes to interviewing politicians, there may well be no fireworks of any kind.