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France was poised for major change Sunday night when Socialist
candidate François Hollande looked set to beat conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy
in run-off balloting for France’s presidency. Initial results revealed
at 8pm local time forecast Hollande beating Sarkozy by a seemingly
insurmountable score of 51.9% to 48.1%. When that result is confirmed by
the final tally, Hollande will become France’s first Socialist
president in 17 years–lifted to power by a majority of voters who
embraced his calls for a greater emphasis on economic growth and targeted social spending to counteract the austerity measures implemented to help shrink France’s excessive debt. Yet in addition to reflecting public desire for policy change, Hollande’s election will also be interpreted as a personal rebuke to the unpopular and embattled Sarkozy, who becomes France’s first single-term president in 31 years.
The announcement of Hollande’s projected win was greeted with an
eruption of cheers by elated supporters gathered around the
country–including a festive throng assembled outside the Socialist
Party’s Left Bank headquarters in Paris. Chants of “François president!”
and “We’ve won!” rang out to celebrate the news awaiting Hollande’s
televised victory speech from the south-central town of Tulle, which he
has represented as a regional official and national legislator since the
late 1980s. Socialist officials said they expected Hollande’s comments
to take up his campaign theme of unity to deal with the financial crisis
France and Europe faces in contrast to what he had said was Sarkozy’s
penchant for division. Less than 20 minutes after the partial results
were announced, Sarkozy addressed his supporters in a Paris auditorium,
telling them that he “assumed full responsibility for this defeat.” He
also wished Hollande luck in the “trials” facing France’s top leader at a
time of continental crisis.
Hollande’s run-off triumph ended what had become an increasingly nasty duel
with Sarkozy in the wake of first round voting April 22. Rather
unexpectedly, Hollande topped the field of 10 candidates in that initial
stage with 28.6% of the vote, slightly edging Sarkozy’s 27.2%. That result—the
first in Fifth Republic history in which a participating incumbent
failed to win the opening round—compounded the challenge Sarkozy already faced in reversing simulated run-off voting results that for months have shown Hollande winning handily.
In his efforts to do that, Sarkozy not only attacked his Socialist
rival as being a “liar” whose leftist program would “bring France to
ruin” amid the euro crisis. He also stepped up his much-decried bid to lure over 6.4 million people who voted for National Front leader Marine Le Pen April 22 by taking up nationalistic,
protectionist, and anti-immigrant positions traditionally defended by
the extreme-right—and scorned by France’s mainstream. In the end, that
strategy clearly proved more damaging than helpful to Sarkozy’s re-election fortunes.
With the caustic campaign battle finally over, many Hollande backers
were less focused on recrimination, and more intent on celebrating the
left’s first presidential win since Socialist François Mitterrand left
the Elysée in 1995. In anticipation of Hollande’s triumph, preparations
were made earlier Sunday at the Place de la Bastille to welcome a crowd
that had gathered as of late afternoon to replicate the giant party that
formed there in 1981 to hail Mitterrand’s upset presidential victory
over incumbent Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (Sarkozy’s one-term
predecessor). Hollande himself was scheduled to fly from Tulle to Paris
in the evening, and join Socialist officials and supporters in the
Bastille area to mark his success.
The fête promises to be short-lived, however. With Sarkozy’s term set
to end May 15 at the latest, Hollande must move quickly to appoint an
interim leftist government awaiting legislative elections in June. He
will also have to lay out economic policy priorities that voters, his
euro zone colleagues, and financial markets are all anxiously awaiting
to hear—and will doubtless respond to in differing ways.
Hollande must also prepare for a summit of NATO leaders in Chicago in
June. Before that, Hollande has said he’ll organize a visit to Berlin
to meet with austerity-focused German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel has voiced loud opposition to Hollande’s promise to renegotiate
the European Union deficit- and debt-fighting treaty to add growth
mechanisms to it. She even publicly endorsed the re-election bid of her
treaty co-instigator, Sarkozy—at one point even pledging to campaign in
France on behalf of the president.
Hollande has said he won’t allow Merkel’s actions in favor of Sarkozy
to undermine Franco-German relations. Indeed, given the importance of
that partnership in European affairs—and his own determination to
renegotiate the treaty critical to the euro’s future despite the
Chancellor’s hostility—Hollande is expected to make contacting Merkel
one of his first moves as president-elect.
“I think François Hollande will speak with the German Chancellor this
very evening,” said Socialist official and potential prime minister
Jean-Marc Ayrault, according to French press reports Sunday. “Because
[that partnership is] vital to Europe’s recovery, [and] the
reorientation of Europe towards growth, towards competitiveness, and
towards protection.”
Wooing the conservative Merkel away from the total austerity remedies
she favors and towards a campaign to invest in economic growth won’t be
easy for a President Hollande who has no experience in national
government or international relations. But if he managed to overcome
what at one time looked like impossible odds to defeat Sarkozy, who
knows what else might be possible?
