France's Rivalry at the Top

...He soon came around, though, when he remembered that a former President, Valéry Giscard d' Estaing, had been finance minister, and realized that holding the purse strings placed him at the hub of the government...

...Actually, Sarkozy resented his appointment to the Finance Ministry...

...He is also yielding to populist temptation...

...Sarkozy is eager to fill the post because he sees it as a springboard to the presidency...

...He also realizes he does not stand a chance unless backed by a powerful party—something Chirac understood in the 1970s when he seized control of what was then the Rally for the Republic Party (RPR...

...In many respects the two men are strikingly different...

...With Spain, Sarkozy would like to pursue a Mediterranean policy—a closer working relationship with North Africa and, beyond that, sub-Saharan Africa...

...About his restlessness, he says, "I'm always surprised when I hear people say, 'There's plenty of time.' Time is precious, so precious that one cannot afford to waste it or presume to have a hold over it...

...On the whole, he endorses the present French foreign policy, particularly on Iraq, but he confesses to a fascination with the United States...

...Commenting on Chirac's persuasiveness, Sarkozy notes, "He doesn't shrink from using massive arguments— even if they are indigestible...

...A third factor in the rivalry is the question of who will be the new UMP leader...

...That is why he has been able to reform his country...

...Since Sarkozy declared on television a few months ago that he thinks of heading the republic "every day, and not only when shaving," he and the President have been paying each other double-edged compliments...

...Chirac, meanwhile, has not forgotten that Sarkozy backed Edouard Balladur against him in the 1995 presidential race...

...Chirac guards his family's privacy, although his daughter Claude, one of his personal advisers, is occasionally in the limelight...

...The former comes from a Catholic middle class background that he rebelled against in his student days, selling the Communist daily l'Humanité on street corners...

...Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie, who is close to Chirac and led the RPR before it merged with other Center-Right parties to become the UMP, thinks the two jobs are incompatible...

...The rest is anecdotal...

...Why spend money on the military if we do not intend to go to war...

...A recent poll published in the Journal du Dimanche found that a majority prefer him to stay where he is rather than run for the UMP leadership...

...Sarkozy has not tried to trim the Defense budget, but he has proposed spreading it over seven years instead of five...

...The increased tension between the two men is partly due to the defeat of the Center-Right majority in the March regional elections, and to further disappointments in June's European Parliament balloting...

...His tendency to resist Chirac has contributed to Sarkozy's popularity, and disagreement between the two men soon broke out over the Defense budget...

...In the wake of these flourishes, finance minister seemed a thankless assignment, especially with Chirac leaving him little room to maneuver...

...Chirac is tall and robust, Sarkozy short and slight...

...He went on to hint that he would ask him to step down if he did not respect a simple rule: "I do the deciding and he implements my decisions...

...I must reconsider my action.'" And he willingly quotes novelist Romain Rolland: "Those who do may err at times, those who never do always err...

...On July 14, Chirac said bluntly that if Sarkozy is elected leader of the party, he must resign from the government...

...Forty per cent of the civilians working for Defense who retired in 2003 were not replaced...

...This past May 9 Sarkozy embarrassed the other leading members of his and Chirac's party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), by urging a referendum when it did not seem to be in the cards...

...This seemed to pay off in terms of public opinion, although perhaps not quite as he expected...

...There were, for instance, loud protests from university faculty about plans to cut back on tenured posts...

...Yet compared with Chirac, he is young enough to wait a little longer before becoming the President of a nation that has stubbornly elected older men...

...For two reasons...

...His name was Jacques Chirac...

...Unlike Chirac, who—following de Gaulle, d'Estaing and Socialist President François Mitterrand—has pursued a special relationship with Germany, Sarkozy favors closer ties with Britain and Spain...

...In addition, Sarkozy caused unease among the political class by declaring that France's policy of integration no longer works and that affirmative action is necessary...

...Chirac, clearly, has since come around to Sarkozy's view...

...He believes, though, that everything must be done to lower the deficit and bring it as close as possible to the inflation rate...

...Lately the pair seem to be egging each other on...

...Memorably, he engaged in debate with the xenophobic leader of France's far Right, Jean-Marie le Pen, and a Muslim close to the fundamentalists, Tariq Ramadam, cornering them brilliantly...

...Chirac, by contrast, has decided to slow reforms and heed the unrest that became perceptible in different areas...

...He has reshuffled the cards, united the Left and attracted Conservative votes too...

...Chirac is no kinder...

...The Sarkozy Maneuver France's Rivalry at the Top By Janice Valls-Russell Paris This year's Bastille Day celebrations on July 14 also marked the centenary of the Entente cordiale between France and Britain...

...Alliot-Marie has responded that in 2004 her ministry was scheduled to spend $18.5 billion, "10 per cent more than in 2003, to compensate for five years of budgetary cutbacks under the Socialists...

...The other reason is for his direct, unaffected style, after six years in power...

...Disasters in that part of the world inevitably affect us, he says...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...The same day Alliot-Marie, asked about France's nuclear program, replied that the country could not afford to drop it in a period of international instability, with countries such as North Korea, Pakistan and India stepping up their nuclear efforts...

...When he approached Sarkozy for the Finance Ministry, Chirac explicitly stated that France's five-year military program, approved in 2002, should not be affected by cutbacks in public spending...

...He called for making more spots available to first- or second-generation members of France's immigrant communities among the ranks of students and teachers at prestigious institutions of higher education...

...Charged with responsibility for religious affairs and civil rights, Sarkozy created a Council for Muslims in France and braved protests at a large Muslim gathering when he publicly declared that women could not be photographed veiled for their identity cards...

...The latter, the son of Hungarian Jews, is a self-made man who early on dropped his legal career to plunge into politics: At age 27 he was elected mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, a plush town on the edge of Paris...

...Sarkozy is in a hurry...

...Sarkozy saw it as a sign that the government had not sufficiently explained its policies...

...Sarkozy knows that Chirac's favorite—the man he would have become his dauphin—has long been Alain Juppé, an exprime minister and the outgoing UMP president...

...The antimilitary mood is strong in France...

...Chirac sharply argued on July 14 that protecting the country against terrorism is not a matter of merely putting more policemen on the streets...

...He advises Sarkozy's friends to warn him to "be careful and avoid the temptations of demagogy and populism...

...But she cannot compete with Sarkozy's young wife, Cecilia, who hosts elegant dinners with intellectuals and opens her home to journalists...

...He had to wait almost 20 years before moving to the Elysée...

...The increase has not prevented the government from achieving its goal of an overall zero per cent increase over the past two years...

...By targeting the Defense Ministry, Sarkozy is touching on an area that has been, like foreign affairs, the domain of French presidents since General Charles de Gaulle...

...He differs from others, he claims, in that he admits to failure: "I'm not afraid of saying, 'I've failed...

...goes the simplistic line...

...He felt he was being "buried alive" after his successful stint as Interior Minister, a position he played for high visibility in the media...

...The Royal Horse Guards brought a splash of red to the Champs-Elysées and British planes traced a tricolor in the sky—an apt symbol of rapprochement after the divide caused by the conflict in Iraq and recent disagreements over the future of Europe...

...To slow the erosion of votes to the Left, Chirac had reshuffled the government at the beginning of April, but kept Jean-Pierre Raffarin as prime minister—a post Sarkozy hoped he would be awarded, as he hoped after the 2002 presidential contest...

...Some recall another minister who was in a rush to become President—in such arush,thathequarreled with the President then (d'Estaing) and got himself elected mayor of Paris, convinced the office would be a springboard to power...

...Regularly voted the most popular government minister in opinion polls, Sarkozy is convinced he can do both jobs—an idea that pleases neither Chirac nor Raffarin...

...Running a party is "an 18-hour-a-day job," she says...

...Asked in a recent interview in L'Express who was the foreign leader he most admired, he answered, "Tony Blair...

...If we spent two per cent more than that, it is because last year the Finance Ministry asked us to postpone to 2004 investments that had been scheduled for 2003...

...Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has also announced a referendum...

...It is one of the few points on which he and his ebullient Finance Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, publicly agree...

...He plunged into the job with the energy that has become his hallmark, using simple, everyday language to explain what could and could not be done to control prices or curb public spending...

...He is stepping down this fall because in January a court found him guilty of illegally financing the UMP...

...Sarkozy claims the Defense Ministry spent 12 per cent more during the first half of 2004 than during the same period in 2003...

...The interpretation of this spring's voting pattern has been another point of disagreement...

...Sarkozy's style, a blend of bluntness and brutal energy, is both his supreme strength and a possible liability...

...They know I am concerned about their public safety, their purchasing power, their jobs...

...Asked to comment on Chirac's July 14 address the next day, he chose, in a symbolic gesture, to reply from the steps of the Elysée Palace as he left a Cabinet meeting: "People in France know me...

...The finance minister knows that hard as he may try, he will not be able to bring the deficit down to 3 per cent, the European Union's recommended level, in 2005...

...Instead, he had to make do with moving from the Interior Ministry to Finance...

...The same day British officials welcomed President Jacques Chirac's announcement that he would call a referendum in 2005 on the European Constitution...

...At 49 he is no longer quite the young man who at 27 became France's youngest mayor...

...He has yet to outline how to accomplish this goal...

...France is currently running a 3.6 per cent deficit—to the irritation of the European Commission...

...Sarkozy had already refused the post in May 2002, preferring to serve as interior minister, the next best job in his view, after the coveted prime ministership...

...Hostility to involvement in Iraq, powerful from the outset, cuts across the political spectrum...

...And workers for the state-controlled gas and electricity network were carrying out wildcat strikes to protest opening the company to private investors in accordance with European legislation against state monopolies...

...Now the higher education and research positions have not only been maintained, their number has been increased, while the workers have been promised that they will keep their civil servant status...

...They worry that this would weaken the Prime Minister, whose popularity has slumped over the past few months...

...Scarcely an evening passed without his showing up on television paying visits to policemen on night duty or to firemen extinguishing summer blazes...

...On July 14 Chirac insisted that France could not afford to lose ground on security issues in the present international climate, and that there was "no reason to tamper with the Defense budget...

...They have never been good friends, however...

...The decision, revealed by Chirac during his traditional Bastille Day television interview, had more to do with internal politics, though, than with foreign policy...

...On this point, he disagrees with Prime Minister Raffarin, who has publicly stated he will not let his government's financial policies be dictated to him by Brussels...

...He argued against abandoning the goals it set in the name of modernizing the French state: reducing public sector spending, lowering taxes, bringing more flexibility to the labor market, taking a firm line on law and order, and promoting the integration of immigrant communities...

...What the two men share is a natural restlessness—more evident in the 49year-old Sarkozy than in the 71-yearold Chirac...

...The defense minister contends that she has in fact saved the state money by cutting back on personnel...

...At the same time, he pushed laws through Parliament that restricted immigration and that reinforced measures against racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia...