Crossroads

The past few days, I followed the election campaigns in France more than the boring one happening here. I tried to soak up the commentaries, the analyses and the policy positions taken by the major candidates trying to succeed Jacques Chirac.

My interest in French politics dates back to the days when I was a student in that country. Beyond that personal affinity, however, the current contest for the French presidency happens at a crossroads in the political life of this nation. It will have profound repercussions on many policy issues in the coming years.

The rest of Europe awaits for the French to decide if they want to return to leading the project of building a stronger regional community with its own constitution. The EU project sailed into the doldrums after the French rejected a European Constitution in a referendum.

No post-war presidential contest in France has been as suspenseful as this one. Although the right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy enjoys a slight advantage in the pre-election surveys, a full third of the voters remain undecided in the last survey taken before the polls.

Quite remarkably, three million fresh young French turned up to register as voters. Pollsters are not quite sure, however, if this implies a stronger left-wing vote. The young voters seem to be as undecided as the old voters.

Also, the issues are not neatly cut up along the classical left-to-right spectrum. The three principal issues at the top of the minds of French voters are unemployment, national identity and immigration policy.

All these issues tend to favor the political right — except that there are three major right-wing candidates against a single socialist bet.

The French held their elections last Sunday and, by the time this piece sees print, the two top candidates who will contend in the run-off elections scheduled two weeks from now will be known.

It is almost certain there will be run-off elections. Twelve candidates are seeking the powerful post of French president. In the French system, a run-off election between the top two candidates will be held in the event no one gets a majority of the vote in the first round.

The provision for a run-off is a wise one. It averts the possibility — which is the standard here — of a minority president.

Five years ago, the far-right candidate Le Pen stunned the world when he placed second to Chirac and contested the run-off. At that time, the left wing of French politics simply collapsed. The run-off was a fight between the right and the far-right.

This time around, the left-wing of French politics found a champion in the person of Socialist Party leader Segolene Royal.

Royal is the first serious female candidate for the French presidency — a powerful institution tailor-made for the imperious Charles de Gaulle. She is a politician of great intellect and charm, but her affinity with the socialist party traps her to a policy framework that belongs to the 1950s: rigid labor laws that are the cause of high unemployment, protectionism which is the source of this nation’s economic lethargy and weak policy positions on foreign affairs.

She and her party cannot possibly lead the 21st century style of economic revolution that France so direly needs.

Sarkozy is Chirac’s heir apparent, having served as a minister in the latter’s cabinet. But he has none of Royal’s charm and tends to speak too bluntly. He strikes the French voters as being too aloof, too ambitious and possibly autocratic. But many votes concede he is the only candidate with both the ideological disposition and the personality to push ahead with the economic policy reforms France must have if this country wants to avert stagnation.

Because of the rigidities in the employment and investment environment, many talented young Frenchmen, like their German counterparts, are leaving home to work abroad.

His share of the right-wing vote is contested by the anti-immigrant Le Pen and by Francois Bayrou — who presents himself as the centrist candidate even as his political party is much more to the right of Sarkozy’s.

In order to avert another shocking electoral surprise by the phobic Le Pen, Sarkozy has taken his policy positions farther to the right. But that has opened up a large space for Bayrou to attract centrist voters who fear both the paralyzing ideological positions of the left as well as the perilous tendencies of the right.

No wonder the French voters are so painfully undecided.

The left-wing candidates offer a policy program that will make France even more inward-looking and detached from the realities of the modern world economy. The right-wing candidates will likely precipitate a rise in communal tensions that have, in the past few years, already exploded in race riots.

The right-wing candidates will adopt economic policies that will undermine the job security and agricultural subsidies that enabled France to insulate itself from the volatilities of globalization. But the left-wing candidates will probably, in the name of "justice", revive the protectionist regime that is the cause of this country’s economic stagnation. Recall that last year, Frenchmen rioted in the streets to oppose relaxation of labor rules as a means to cure rising youth unemployment.

Every option facing the French voters in this election is painful. And yet, they must make a choice one way or the other — even as they are baffled at the degree of global interest their elections have drawn.