* Sarkozy steps up right-wing rhetoric after Hollande edges
first round
* Le Pen, third, records highest ever vote for National
Front
* First time a sitting president fails to win round one of
vote
(Adds Sarkozy rally, Bayrou decision, Le Pen quote)
By Daniel Flynn and Brian Love
April 23 (Reuters) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy
appealed directly to far right voters on Monday with pledges to
get tough on immigration and security, after a record showing in
a first round election by the National Front made them potential
kingmakers.
Polls show centre-right leader Sarkozy on course to become
the first French president to lose a bid for re-election in more
than 30 years, trailing Socialist challenger Francois Hollande
ahead of a May 6 run-off.
Hollande pipped Sarkozy in Sunday’s 10-candidate first round
by 28.6 percent to 27.2 percent, but National Front leader
Marine Le Pen stole the show, surging to 17.9 percent, the
biggest tally a far-right candidate has ever managed.
Her performance mirrored advances across the continent by
anti-establishment Eurosceptical populists from Amsterdam and
Vienna to Helsinki as the euro zone’s grinding debt crisis
deepens anger over government spending cuts and unemployment.
“National Front voters must be respected,” Sarkozy told
reporters as he left his campaign headquarters in Paris. “They
voiced their view. It was a vote of suffering, a crisis vote.
Why insult them? I have heard Mr Hollande criticising them.”
The unpopular Sarkozy, the first sitting president to be
forced into second place in the first round of a re-election
bid, now faces a difficult balancing act to attract both the
far-right and centrist voters he needs to stay in office.
The weak showing by Sarkozy spooked investors already
nervous about European governments’ ability to service their
debts, helping to send French stocks and bonds lower.
Returning to the campaign trail on Monday, Sarkozy hammered
home promises to toughen border controls, tighten security on
the streets and keep industrial jobs in France – signature
issues for Le Pen at a time of anger over immigration, violent
crime and unemployment running at a 12-year high.
Sarkozy will hold a “real workers'” day rally on May 1 in a
bid to upstage simultaneous events held by Hollande, the FN and
trade unions.
After five turbulent years leading the world’s fifth
economy, Sarkozy could go the way of 10 other euro zone leaders
swept from office since the start of the crisis in late 2009.
Hollande has vowed to change the direction of Europe by
tempering austerity measures with higher taxes on the rich and
more social spending. Polls published on Sunday predicted he
would win the run-off with between 53 and 56 percent of votes.
But the strong showing of Le Pen, gravel-voiced 43-year-old
daughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, offered
Sarkozy a glimmer of hope by suggesting there are more votes up
for grabs on the right than had been thought.
“Marine Le Pen’s breakthrough throws the second round wide
open,” read the front page of right-leaning Le Figaro, while
left-wing Liberation read: “Hollande leads. Le Pen the killjoy”.
HIGH TURNOUT
Hollande blamed Sarkozy for fuelling the rise in the far
right and said he would make no attempt to seek National Front
votes. “Since some voters supported them out of anger, I will
listen to them…but I will not court the far right,” he said.
On a strong turnout of 80.2 percent, more than a third of
voters cast ballots for protest candidates outside the
mainstream, foreshadowing a possible reshaping of France’s
political balance of power at parliamentary elections in June.
Le Pen’s focus is now on securing a strong National Front
showing in the parliamentary vote, and she is keeping her
distance from Sarkozy, describing him as doomed.
“Faced with an outgoing president who will leave a much
weakened party, we are the only true opposition to the
neo-liberal left,” she told cheering supporters on Sunday.
She said she would give her view on the runoff at a May Day
rally in Paris. Speaking on France 2 she said it was insulting
to her voters to say they had chosen her in protest and
suggested she would not formally endorse either candidate.
“I don’t change my mind like I change my shirt,” she said.
“I have nothing to sell or negotiate. For a long time I have
considered Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande to be the same
on core subjects.”
It is not the first time Sarkozy has appealed to National
Front voters before a runoff – the tactic helped him win his
first mandate in 2007. Le Pen’s strategy director Florian
Philippot said it would not work twice: “The French no longer
fall for this electioneering game Sarkozy plays.”
Financial market analysts say whoever wins in two weeks’
time will have to impose tougher austerity measures than either
candidate has admitted during the campaign, cutting public
spending as well as raising taxes to cut the budget deficit.
INVESTOR JITTERS
European markets were sour after the French results and the
Dutch government’s failure to push through an austerity budget
made elections there almost unavoidable. The euro retreated from
two-week highs, European stocks opened lower, and safe-haven
German bonds opened higher, increasing the premium investors
demand to hold French and Dutch bonds.
“It’s beginning to look like the perfect storm,” said
Stewart Richardson, chief investment officer at RMG. “It looks
like the French vote was more against Sarkozy than we would have
thought last week, and so there is a leftward lurch in France.”
Sarkozy challenged Hollande to three television debates over
the next two weeks instead of the customary one. But Socialist
aides said Hollande, who has no ministerial experience and is a
less accomplished television performer than Sarkozy, had made
clear he would accept only one prime-time live debate, on May 2.
Communist-backed hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, who polls
showed at one stage challenging Le Pen for third place, finished
a distant fourth on 11.1 percent, ahead of centrist Francois
Bayrou with 9.1 percent.
Political pundits said Hollande still appears to have larger
reserves of second-round votes than Sarkozy, who would need to
pick up at least three quarters of Le Pen’s supporters and two
thirds of Bayrou’s to squeak a wafer-thin victory.
Polls taken on Sunday by three institutes suggested that
between 48 and 60 percent of Le Pen voters planned to switch to
the president, while Bayrou’s backers split almost evenly
between the two finalists, with one third undecided.
Bayrou said he would make his decision on May 3 after
consulting and listening to the two finalists.
“The game is getting very difficult for Nicolas Sarkozy,”
Jerome Saint-Marie of CSA polling agency told i>TELE. “There’s a
genuine demand for social justice, precisely because times are
hard and voters see sacrifices will have to be made … What
they want is that this pain is fairly shared.”
Melenchon, whose fiery calls for a “citizens’ revolution”
drew tens of thousands to open-air rallies, urged his followers
to turn out massively on May 6 to defeat Sarkozy, but he could
not bring himself to mention Hollande by name.
Greens candidate Eva Joly endorsed Hollande, who can also
count on the modest votes of two Trotskyist also-rans.
“Sarkozy is going to be torn between campaigning in the
middle ground and campaigning on the right. He’ll have to reach
out to the right between the rounds, so he’ll lose the centre,”
said political scientist Stephane Rozes of the CAP think-tank.
If Hollande wins, joining a small minority of left-wing
governments in Europe, he has promised to renegotiate a European
budget discipline treaty signed by Sarkozy. That could presage
tension with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who made the pact
a condition for further assistance to troubled euro zone states.
A spokesman for Merkel said on Monday she continued to
support Sarkozy but had no plans to campaign on his behalf.
(Additional reporting by Catherine Bremer, John Irish, Nicholas
Vinocur, Vicky Buffery, Alexandria Sage, Brian Love, Matthias
Blamont and Daniel Flynn in Paris, Anirban Nag in London;
Editing by Peter Graff)
