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THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE (owned by The NYTimes and The Washington Post) WEIGHS IN:

French candidates stick to their scripts in a heated debate
By Katrin Bennhold and Doreen Carvajal

Wednesday, May 2, 2007
PARIS:: In a long awaited debate on national television, Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the right, and Ségolène Royal, a Socialist and the first woman with a serious chance at the presidency, traded barbs Wednesday evening but barely strayed from known positions before an audience of millions of people seeking an answer to the question of who should lead this country out of its malaise.

Royal centered her attack on Sarkozy’s record as a member of the outgoing government, while he sought to question her competence to lead the country.

For two hours, in a heavily domestic discussion, the two aired France’s problems: unemployment, crime, young people without hope for the future, public health and pension systems threatened by drastic reduction of funds.

This was the first presidential debate in France in 12 years and Royal came into it needing a strong knockout punch.

Before the face-off began, commentators expressed doubts that the encounter could radically alter the campaign before the vote Sunday. Nearly nine in 10 voters say they have already decided who would get their ballot and Sarkozy has been ahead in the opinion polls since mid-January.

Sarkozy, 52, was chosen by lots as the opening speaker so Royal, 53, won the last word in an encounter that was meticulously planned, with the candidates seated exactly 2.2 meters from each other across a white table.

Both were allotted exactly the same air time.

The first question of substance was about the style each candidate would bring to the presidency. They quickly moved to a sharp exchange centered on the fears of the French ? unemployment and crime ? with Sarkozy defending his four years as interior minister and Royal accusing his government of neither suppressing crime nor giving sufficient funds or protection to public services ? from the police to hospitals.

“What have you done in five years? For five years you had all the power.

There is a problem of credibility,” Royal said after Sarkozy outlined his plans for institutional and economic reforms.

“You talking to me about credibility, Madame Royal?” Sarkozy retorted.

Sparks flew between the two as moderators parried their volleys. In the middle of an exchange on schooling for the handicapped, Royal sought to paint Sarkozy as unreasonably hard-hearted. He urged her to calm down, whereupon she insisted three times: “I will not calm down!” Sarkozy then said: “To be president of the Republic you have to be calm..”

It was important to draw the right conclusions of the past few years in France, he said, pointing to the strong showing of the nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002. The president is someone, he said, who must “keep his word and really engage in a few topics.”

“I will speak much more frequently to the French,” he added in a clear jab at President Jacques Chirac, who at moments of crisis was sometimes silent during his 12 years in power. “I don’t want to hide behind taboos,” he said.

A combative Royal riposted by sketching a devastating picture of France today, a country deeply in debt with two million people living below the poverty line, three million unemployed and prey to rising violence.

“I want to get France out of the situation it finds itself in today,” she said, challenging Sarkozy to say whether as a member of the government he accepted responsibility for the current state of affairs.

Sarkozy came straight back at her: “Yes, Madame Royal,” he said. “I am responsible for a part of the record of this government.” But he added that when the center-right government took over from the Socialists in 2002, “I found a situation that was catastrophic.”

Sarkozy threw back at her the record of the Socialist government under Lionel Jospin ? of which Royal was a member. He pulled out his own statistics, asserting that the crime rate today was much improved from the days when the Socialists were in power.

Sarkozy agreed with Royal that the debt was a major problem, but said it had not sprouted up in the last five years. Part of his solution, he said, would be to replace only one of every two civil servants workers who vacates a position.

Royal went on the attack. “If I were elected president of the republic, the rights of the republic will be protected,” she said. “No, Mr. Sarkozy, I will not reduce social services,” she then declared, adding that if his government had not closed so many classrooms, for example, schools and schoolchildren would be doing better.

Coming to what Royal described as the central question, work, the two clashed again. She called Sarkozy’s proposals “inefficient and even dangerous” and asked him, “If you think the 35-hour work week created so much damage, why didn’t you get rid of it?”

“I want to re-launch growth,” she said, adding that she would rather give a job to a young person than give a gift to business in the form of exoneration from payroll taxes on overtime work beyond the 35-hour week.

“I am in favor of a 35-hour week,” Sarkozy insisted. But he said people should have the right to work more if they wanted, especially people with low salaries. “What good is extra time off if at the end of the month there’s no money left?” he asked. “Let people make more money if they agree to work more.”

In one of the more heated exchanges of the evening, Sarkozy accused Royal of having no credible economic program.

“It seems to me that when it comes to debt,” he said, “you given no indication how to reduce it. That’s your right. When it comes to growth, you have given no means of reviving growth. I have: because you’re right we need more growth. The problem of France is that there is about 1 percentage point of growth less than in other big democracies and economies in the world. Why: For a simple reason, Madame Royal: Because we work less than the others.

“It may surprise you,” he said, that none of the 10 countries in Europe that have fuller employment have the 35-hour week. “You want more civil servants?” he added. “That’s nice. But how do you pay that?” She shot back: “Don’t deform my words. I will maintain the number of civil servants not increase it. I will redeploy them in a more efficient way.”

The two candidates spent most of the debate on domestic matters, only turning to foreign and security policy after the first two hours.

The debate was moderated by Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, anchor of the evening newscast on TF1, the leading French station, and Arlette Chabot of state-run France 2. Both had interviewed the candidates several times separately, but neither had moderated a presidential debate before.

Broadcasters expected 20 million people to tune in to the debate. In many usually animated streets of Paris cafés and restaurants, normally bustling, were populated with only handfuls of people, and the sounds of the debate blared through open windows.