Turnout in France's presidential election was massive as voters chose yesterday between two divergent visions of the future, with conservative front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy urging the French to work more and Socialist Segolene Royal pledging to safeguard welfare protections.
Surveys suggest Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, has a strong edge over Royal, who would become France's first female president if she wins. The most recent survey, taken by Ipsos/Dell on Friday, said he was leading 55 percent to her 45 percent.
By noon yesterday, turnout was more than 34 percent, the highest rate going back at least five elections, the Interior Ministry said. Results were due be announced after the polls closed at 8pm.
PHOTO: AFP
Both Sarkozy, who says he had to fight harder because of his foreign roots, and Royal, a mother of four who says she had to overcome sexism, are originals in French politics and energized an electorate craving new direction.
Whoever wins, the race marks a generational shift, because a 50-something will replace 74-year-old President Jacques Chirac, in office for 12 years.
But Sarkozy and Royal, nicknamed Sarko and Sego, have radically different formulas for how to revive France's sluggish economy, reverse its declining clout in world affairs and improve the lives of the impoverished residents of housing projects where largely minority youth rioted in 2005.
Sarkozy, 52, says France's 35-hour work week is absurd and proposes relaxing labor laws to encourage hiring. A former interior minister, Sarkozy cracked down on drunk driving, crime and illegal immigration.
He is an admirer of the US who has borrowed from some American policy ideas. Tough-talking and blunt, he alienated many youths in France's housing projects when he called young delinquents "scum."
Police were quietly keeping watch for possible unrest yesterday in France's poor, predominantly immigrant neighborhoods if Sarkozy was elected. Authorities in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris -- the epicenter of the 2005 rioting -- refused officers' requests for days off yesterday, one official said.
At a polling station near Paris' Champs-Elysees, Anne Combemale said she voted for Sarkozy because of his market-oriented economic platform.
"He has the willpower to change France," said Combemale, 43, who is unemployed.
To push through change, the winner will need a majority in French legislative elections next month. Sarkozy has drawn up a whirlwind program for his first 100 days in office and plans to put big reforms before parliament at a special session in July: One bill would make overtime pay tax-free to encourage people to work more, and another would put in place tougher sentencing for repeat offenders.
Royal, 53, believes France must keep its welfare protections strong. She wants to raise the minimum wage, create 500,000 state-funded starter jobs for youths and build 120,000 subsidized housing units a year.
On the campaign trail, she often talked about her four children, and she appealed to women to vote for her because she is female.
Bechir Chakroun, a 26-year-old who works in marketing, said he liked Royal's commitment to helping the poor.
"She represents change, I want to see what a woman can do," he said.
Royal is strong on the environment and schools but has made a series of foreign policy gaffes -- suggesting, for instance, that the Canadian province of Quebec deserved independence.
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