* Le Pen says awaiting Sarkozy answers before taking stance
* Sarkozy courts National Front voters, refuses formal pact
* Centrist candidate criticises violence in politics
* Hollande says Sarkozy has broken the rules
By John Irish and Daniel Flynn
PARIS, April 26 (Reuters) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy
swung further to the right on Thursday, proposing a new licence
to shoot for police pursuing suspects, in an increasingly
frantic quest to woo far-right National Front voters before a
decisive election runoff.
A new rise in unemployment to the highest level since
September 1999 dealt another blow to the conservative Sarkozy’s
effort to catch up with Socialist frontrunner Francois Hollande
before the May 6 second round of the presidential election.
Sarkozy is on course to become the first French president to
lose a bid for re-election in more than 30 years, in part
because of the sputtering economy. The number of jobless rose
for the 11th straight month in March to 2.88 million, up 7.2
percent in a year.
The latest opinion poll, published 10 days before the
decisive ballot, suggested Sarkozy’s strategy of courting the
6.4 million electors who voted for far-right candidate Marine Le
Pen in last Sunday’s first round was making scant impact.
The TNS-Sofres poll showed Hollande holding a 10-point lead
with 55 percent of voting intentions.
Hollande and Sarkozy face each other in the run-off after
placing first and second in the first round on Sunday.
Le Pen, who has become a potential kingmaker after scoring
17.9 percent, sought to extract concessions from Sarkozy before
she announces her position on the runoff, challenging him not to
block her party’s way in parliamentary elections.
Both finalists have courted Le Pen’s voters but Sarkozy has
made the most direct overtures, saying he respected their vote
for a party which has long been stigmatised.
Le Pen has promised to spell out her view at the National
Front’s traditional “Joan of Arc” rally on May 1, and she urged
Sarkozy to make his position clearer concerning parliamentary
polls in June.
Building on her record support, the National Front hopes to
win its first seats in parliament since 1986, when an experiment
with proportional representation gave it 35 deputies.
“In a runoff between the National Front and a Socialist,
would the UMP and the president prefer to have one of my
deputies or a Socialist elected?” Le Pen asked, referring to
Sarkozy’s centre-right Union for a Popular Movement party.
“I still don’t have an answer to that question. I’m
waiting,” she said, when asked whom she would endorse. “How I
express myself will depend on the response.”
Hollande, who said he understands voters’ exasperation at
high unemployment and a widening gap between rich and poor, has
blamed Sarkozy for fostering the far right by aping its
aggressive stance on immigration and national identity.
Sarkozy took up another Le Pen proposal on Thursday, calling
for a change in the law to allow policemen on duty who open fire
on suspects to be presumed to have acted in “legitimate
self-defence” unless proven otherwise.
He made the call after hundreds of officers demonstrated in
police cars on the central Champs-Elysees avenue in support of a
colleague who shot dead an armed fugitive in a Paris suburb and
was placed under judicial investigation for suspected murder.
“In a state with the rule of law, we cannot put on the same
level a policeman doing his job and a lawbreaker doing his job,”
he told frenzied supporters, who chanted “We are going to win!”.
NO MINISTERS, NO SEATS
Opinion polls show supporters of Sarkozy’s centre-right UMP
party favour a deal with Le Pen, but the president has ruled out
any agreement which would give the far-right ministerial
positions or help them win seats at June’s legislative election.
Asked about Le Pen’s challenge, Sarkozy said the UMP would
have its own candidates in each constituency, so the choice
between the National Front and a Socialist would not arise.
Were it to repeat Sunday’s performance in the parliamentary
vote, the National Front could split the right-wing vote in many
constituencies, potentially decimating Sarkozy’s UMP party.
If elected, Hollande has pledged to slap higher taxes on
large corporations and the rich, include growth measures in a
German-inspired budget pact imposing austerity across Europe,
and hire 60,000 new teachers.
The prospect of Hollande winning power has sent jitters
through financial markets, even though the 57-year-old has
insisted he is committed to balancing France’s budget by 2017.
The British magazine The Economist, which made waves in
France by accusing both candidates of being “in denial” about
the debt crisis and the need for economic reform, endorsed
Sarkozy on Thursday, calling Hollande “rather dangerous”.
“A French president so hostile to change would undermine
Europe’s willingness to pursue the painful reforms it must
eventually embrace for the euro to survive. That makes him a
rather dangerous man,” it said in an editorial.
Sarkozy, whose flashy style has alienated many voters, needs
the support of around 80 percent of Le Pen’s first round voters
to win. But the TNS-Sofres survey found only 51 percent of her
backers would make the switch, down from 70 percent in 2007 when
Sarkozy’s tough immigration line helped him to the presidency.
Senior aides have suggested Le Pen is highly unlikely to
endorse either candidate because she hopes to profit from an
implosion of the mainstream right if Sarkozy is defeated.
In an open letter to both candidates, Le Pen said she was
not the owner of her first round votes and it was illegitimate
that her supporters were being branded as “xenophobes”.
Sarkozy, treading a fine line between alienating centrists
and winning over Le Pen’s vote, said he was certain that her
supporters did not endorse extremist views and Le Pen herself
had not displayed xenophobia.
In a setback to Sarkozy, centrist candidate Francois Bayrou,
who came fifth with 9.1 percent, accused the president of being
“absurd and offensive” in comparing his voters with those of Le
Pen and called on Wednesday for a more civil campaign.
However, former centrist president Valery Giscard d’Estaing
endorsed Sarkozy on Thursday, saying Hollande would not be able
to change the tax-and-spend ways of the Socialist party which
would expose France to “international speculation”.
