Sarkozy: Let a thousand candidates bloom
DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP Anti-immigration zealot and aging right-wing icon Jean-Marie Le Pen claims he has the endorsements necessary to enter France’s already fascinating presidential race. Still, there’s reason to doubt he can be the force that he’s been in the past, when he sent France’s political establishment into near apoplexy. Le Pen is a mesmerizing orator, ...
DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP
Anti-immigration zealot and aging right-wing icon Jean-Marie Le Pen claims he has the endorsements necessary to enter France’s already fascinating presidential race. Still, there’s reason to doubt he can be the force that he’s been in the past, when he sent France’s political establishment into near apoplexy. Le Pen is a mesmerizing orator, but at nearly 79, he’s getting a bit long in the tooth—and so is his base of elderly voters.
But what Le Pen’s candidacy will do to the evolving race is anyone’s guess. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who is besting socialist Ségolène Royal and centrist François Bayrou in the latest polls, has been encouraging both Le Pen and far left candidate Olivier Besancenot to get into the race:
I fight Mr Le Pen’s ideas. But I will fight to ensure that Mr Besancenot as well as Mr Le Pen can defend their ideas. Democracy mustn’t be hijacked by a small number of people. That isn’t democracy,” he told France 3 TV.
It’s damned magnanimous of Sarkozy. So what’s the angle? The BBC sees it this way:
Mr Sarkozy’s gesture may not be quite so altruistic as it seems – if the National Front is not represented in the elections next month, he will be forced to shift his own position to the right. That would alienate some supporters and give more ground to Mr Bayrou.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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