Conservative, controversial Sarkozy wins French election

The tough-talking former interior minister beat Socialist Ségolène Royal to take the presidency.

from the May 7, 2007 edition

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Royal's defeat is the third straight in France for a once-proud Socialist Party here, and some pundits predict serious soul-searching if not a partial collapse of the left.

"This was a choice between two patterns of life," says Pascal Dessillons, a lawyer emerging from a voting station in a middle-class district of Paris, his granddaughter in tow. "Do we want everything based on the strength of the state, with help for everybody, or do we want to choose a future where men and women have to take responsibility, and consider the value of work?

"There are countries where things work, where people work. Why can't we be one of them? We need a new General De Gaulle."

Yet many of those voting for Royal say they were voting against Sarkozy, whose volatile temperament and law-and-order dictates as Minister of the Interior seem to have made him a person that French either love or hate.

Julie Lochard, a computer-supplies salesperson, voted for Royal, "But I didn't vote with pleasure," she says. "I voted for democracy, because I don't feel Sarkozy understands the concept. He is not for the freedom of all the people."

Along with Sarkozy's promise to shake France out of its socialist policies, including those that make it difficult to hire and fire employees, the 35-hour workweek, welfare and pensions, and the influence of a vast state system run by functionaires, some pundits feel Sarkozy's promise to crack down on immigrants in the restive suburbs may have resonated the deepest.

"This is a major crystallization of one thing – a backlash on the part of middle-class France against the banlieue, against the riots of 2005, the Gard Du Nord riots, new immigrant groups," says Arun Kapil, a political scientist at the American University in Paris. "Sarkozy ran on this issue, and he won on it. He's a brilliant politician, and people listen to him."

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