French voters show they're ready for reform
Abrasive, divisive and pugnacious, the new French president is the kind of politician who can be hard to like. But French voters have visibly warmed to Nicolas Sarkozy's appetite for change in a country that has dodged many of the economic and labour reforms that other western nations have come to take for granted over the past two decades.
Securing the votes of 53 per cent of a whopping turnout of 84 per cent of the French electorate, Mr Sarkozy now has a clear mandate to effect that change. He is soon expected to loosen the 35-hour work week and curb union power while ensuring people can benefit more from working harder. A cautious optimism rightly surrounds his victory over Socialist candidate Segolene Royal, who struggled to define her own policies within a hidebound party that faces tough questions after its third consecutive defeat.
Replacing President Jacques Chirac after 12 years of rule and a political career stretching back four decades, Sunday's election of Mr Sarkozy marks both an end and a beginning. An energetic 52, the centre-right leader of the Union for a Popular Majority is well placed to make the kind of impact not seen across France in years. Hailing from Hungarian immigrant stock, Mr Sarkozy has avoided the baggage of France's stilted political elites.
While France's cultural, social and diplomatic strength is hard to question, its economy lacks weight. The country's growth has been allowed to drift well below that of its European peers. If Mr Sarkozy can lift France's economic performance, he will be doing not just his nation a favour; the benefits will be felt by Europe and beyond.
France is still determinedly France, however, and it is hard to see Mr Sarkozy launching the full-scale Thatcherite revolution some suggest is needed. Many of his reforms remain relatively modest. Far from scrapping the 35-hour work week - a policy that has come to typify dogged French socialist bureaucracy - he is tinkering with it, exempting overtime from tax. Rather than dismantling France's extensive social welfare system, he has vowed to remove benefits from those who are employable but turn down work.
His pragmatism is also on display on foreign policy. While he is seen as far too close to Washington in France's fiercely anti-American political salons, close examination suggests otherwise. While he has praised US as well as British market-oriented values, he stood firmly against the Iraq invasion. He has also repeatedly vowed to push the White House harder on climate change - one election pledge that may be hard to fulfil. And given how poisonous relations between the allies have proven to be in recent years, a move to common ground is probably no bad thing for international relations.
On China, he has been less explicit, but appears flexible. He insisted last month that he would be pushing Beijing on its human rights record but disputed his opponent's call for a boycott of the Olympics. Next year's Olympics, he declared, would 'bring an extraordinary breath of freedom' to the mainland.
The wider optimism is guarded, with good reason. The campaign has highlighted his ability to polarise an already tense electorate still jarred by nationwide rioting two years ago. While the violence sparked intense debate about how to ease a rising disaffected underclass, Mr Sarkozy, then interior minister, simply dismissed the rioters as 'rabble'. As fresh protests clouded his election celebrations, Mr Sarkozy vowed to work for unity across his nation. That pledge could be hardest of all to achieve.
