AP News, February 22nd, 2007
If front-runners Nicolas Sarkozy or Segolene Royal stumble in their race for the French presidency _ and that's a very big "if" _ then a centrist rising slowly but surely in opinion polls is ready to pounce.
Francois Bayrou, whose presents himself as a middle-ground alternative to candidates of the left and right, said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press that the French want a "new deal," one that sets aside traditional political divisions so France can unite in tackling its many problems.
"Everywhere in Europe, there is a desire to escape from quarrels which are essentially those of the 20th century, the quarrels of the Berlin Wall, left and right," said Bayrou, the leader of the UDF party. Polls suggest he is becoming a serious contender in the presidential race.
"The French _ if I'm not mistaken; I say that with a lot of caution _ want to be dealt a new hand, they want a new deal," he said. "Simple as that. And when the people want a new deal, it is very difficult to stop it. And they have found a candidate who responds to their aspirations."
Two months remain before this year's most closely watched European election kicks off with a first round on April 22, followed by a May 6 runoff between the top two candidates.
Some polls have suggested that if Bayrou makes the second round _ seen as very unlikely by many observers _ he could beat either Sarkozy, representing the mainstream right, or Royal, the Socialist.
Bayrou's strategy is to appeal to voters uncomfortable with the notion that the only real choice is between Sarkozy and Royal, and that a second-round duel between those two is a script written in advance.
Bayrou may draw protest votes against the status quo _ just as far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen did in 2002, when he shook France to its core by making the runoff against incumbent President Jacques Chirac.
Le Pen was trounced in that second ballot, with even Socialists backing the conservative Chirac against the former paratrooper who lost an eye in a street fight as a youth _ and was repeatedly convicted of trying to play down the Holocaust.
Bayrou secured less than 7 percent of the vote in the first round of balloting in 2002, placing him a distant fourth. Recent opinion polls have put him in double figures _ pollsters BVA this week credited him with 15 percent; CSA with 17 percent and IFOP with 16 percent _ though all still have him trailing Sarkozy and Royal.
Pollsters caution that many of those professing to back Bayrou are not firmly committed, and that he could easily slip back in the field.
The left-leaning daily Liberation, which dedicated its front page and two inside pages to Bayrou Thursday, predicted that his moment in the campaign sun will be short-lived and that the left-right order will soon be restored. It called Bayrou, "a Mr. Neither-nor. Neither Sego nor Sarko."
Come election day, voters "will have to lean, as in most modern countries, left or right. ... That is to say abandon Francois Bayrou and his imaginary Republic of the center," editorialized the paper, which is rooting for Royal.
Still, the polls have put wind in the sails of Bayrou, who served as education minister from 1993-1997, under both a Socialist president, Francois Mitterrand, and under the conservative Chirac.
In the interview, Bayrou pointed to Germany _ where Chancellor Angela Merkel is locked in a left-right "grand coalition" _ and to coalitions in Austria and in the Netherlands as indications that a shift to the center is feasible in France, too.
He discounted fears that France could suffer the political instability that has plagued Italy, where Premier Romano Prodi resigned Wednesday. Prodi presided for nine months over a fractious coalition that included everyone from Christian Democrats to Communists.
A vote for him, Bayrou said, would be a vote for "a new political method for new times ... to force the two political forces traditionally at war with each other to forget their war and work together."
Bipartisan politics are needed, he added, "to bring the country out of the crisis in which it finds itself." He listed the national debt, pensions, climate change, energy, unemployment and education as problems that "cannot be solved by opposing one camp against the other."
"All polls today show that if I am a candidate in the run-off, then _ to observers' great surprise _ I win the presidential election," said Bayrou. "This is, it's true, the rise of a candidate that we were not expecting. But the French have for a long time not been satisfied with the choice being forced upon them."
