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French leader hopes TV appearance will help boost support

A beleaguered French President Nicolas Sarkozy hopes to use a prime-time TV appearance this week to claw back public support after polls showed a majority of French people think his first year in office has been a failure.

The anniversary has been marred by government infighting, policy U-turns and record low opinion polls, with the public confused over what Sarkozy’s critics call jumbled and piecemeal reforms.

A survey published on Monday by the daily Liberation found that 59 percent of respondents saw Sarkozy’s first year as a failure. This followed a poll for the Journal du Dimanche that broke 50-year records with the lowest approval ratings registered by a modern president after a year in office. In a bruising verdict on the man who styled himself as the only person brave enough to radically reform France, 79 percent felt he had done nothing to “improve the situation of France and the French.”

Even some in his own ruling center-right UMP party are rebelling. The president read the riot act to his squabbling cabinet last week, threatening to sack any minister who did not stick to an agreed line. This followed public slanging matches and U-turns, with the government forced to backtrack on unpopular measures such as scrapping subsidized railcards for large families

“This is a government that’s all over the place,” said Herve de Charette, a UMP member of parliament and former foreign minister.

Over the past 11 months, Sarkozy has fought battles on all fronts, opening up reform on pensions, the legal system, education, health, unemployment benefits and the public sector.

Sarkozy’s party spokesman and adviser Dominique Paille said he would use tomorrow’s TV interview to explain his reforms. Most of the hardest reforms, such as general pensions and healthcare, remain to be made and the economic downturn leaves little room for maneuver.

Paille said: “The French like reform as long as it doesn’t touch them personally.”
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