France's Nicolas Sarkozy, a man who would like French President Jacques Chirac's job, put his reputation as an unstoppable political force on the line on Tuesday with
a promise to sort out the nation's parlous public finances.
Sarkozy, renowned for his limitless ambition as much as his love
of a challenge, held a 90-minute televised news conference to outline his economic strategy, securing the kind of media exposure that hardly anyone expects except for Chirac himself.
Sarkozy said he was determined to boost public confidence so that people would spend more of their wages instead of saving them, and thus give the economy a badly needed boost. He promised tax breaks for house repairs for example.
That bit was unlikely to go down badly with voters.
But he pulled in the opposite direction too, saying he would freeze public spending again next year and that income tax cuts -- a promise made by Chirac -- could only continue if they were offset
by equivalent reductions in public expenditures.
Experts said Sarkozy, no friend of Chirac since he supported a rival in presidential elections in 1995, must have had Chirac's blessing for announcing a change of tack on income tax.
He also firmly recommitted France to getting its public deficit back below EU limits next year, and to freezing government spending to help meet the target.
Politically, that could leave Sarkozy picking up the bill for Chirac in terms of policy changes or painful cutbacks, given the 47-year-old minister's profile in French politics.
Voters handed the left-wing opposition a landslide victory
in regional council elections in March in anger over economic policy and unemployment, triggering the Cabinet shake-up that landed Sarkozy in his new job.
As a reminder of how tough it is, an opinion poll released on Tuesday showed Sarkozy's popularity rating had already taken a plunge. The Ifop agency poll conducted in recent days showed his popularity rating drop to 60 from 67 percent.
Economists who watched Sarkozy's performance on Tuesday said he seemed to be nailing his colors to the mast as far as respecting EU commitments was concerned, even if respecting those commitments looked highly implausible.
They said it remained to be seen whether he would be nailed to the mast himself for trying to do so, because voters did not want to hear of belt-tightening, and were particularly sensitive at a time when the government is preparing a cost-cutting reform of the generous healthcare system.
Despite all the time he had to air his views on Tuesday, the finance minister scarcely mentioned unemployment, currently at close to 10 percent and well above the EU average.
Sarkozy also said the government was determined to stem the rise in the national debt, which is currently one trillion euros (US$1.2 trillion). To help, he planned to sell stakes in the motorways and state-controlled groups like aero-engine maker Snecma.
Those kind of privatizations may not raise many eyebrows, but Sarkozy is also on the front line with plans to sell off a stake in the power utility Electricite de France.
In typically combative form,
he went to meet EdF workers last week to explain the sale plan in person at the nuclear power plant in Chinon in the west of France.
He charmed some of his audience, not least when he said: "I don't give a damn about Anglo-Saxon economic liberalism."
But many believe Sarkozy's credit among voters will wear thin more quickly than he thinks, to
the point that he may only see his finance job as a stop-gap job that he will soon leave behind.
He refuses to say he is merely biding his time and aiming to take the job of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who many believe
is a spent force since the bruising defeat he and the conservatives suffered in regional elections.
That would be one place he could go for part of the time between now and 2007, when Chirac's second term as president comes to an end.
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