Carole Landry

PARIS: Lagging in the polls, President Nicolas Sarkozy is preparing to defend his record in office this week after a first tumultuous year disappointed French voters.

A new poll published on Sunday showed 79 per cent feel their lives have not improved in the past year since Sarkozy took over while only 36 per cent separately said they approved of his performance.

Struggling to seize back momentum, Sarkozy is to give a prime-time 90-minute interview on Thursday on French television that is billed as a key opportunity for the president to turn the tide in public opinion.

Oddly enough, many of Sarkozy’s woes have recently come from within his own camp, with ministers engaging in public bickering and forced to backtrack on a highly unpopular plan to scrap subsidised discounts on train tickets for large families.

Along with much of Europe, France is facing a gloomy economic outlook that significantly reduces Sarkozy’s room to manoeuvre as he seeks to bring in the sweeping reforms he promised in his election campaign last year.

Former prime minister Edouard Balladur, a member of Sarkozy’s governing party, said much had been done in a year but that the government needed to set clear priorities, which in turn would be better understood by French voters.

“Rarely has so much been done in so little time,” Balladur said in an interview to Le Journal du Dimanche weekly.

“I don’t think that the French are disappointed. But the world financial situation is difficult: growth is receding, affecting the vitality of our economy. This is what worries the French.” The government this month rolled out a 166-point deficit reduction plan to trim seven billion euros ($11 billion) in spending by 2011 as French consumers felt the sting from inflation rates now at their highest level since the 1990s.

In poll after poll, the French have listed spending power as their number one concern, replacing unemployment which had been the nation’s number one economic obsession for decades.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, who is vying to lead the Socialist opposition against Sarkozy and ranks as France’s most popular politician, suggested the government was at a loss to deal with the constraints of the difficult economic climate.

Describing government ministers as amateurs, Delanoe said Sarkozy’s team “was wasting the nation’s time and discouraging the French.” ”This government doesn’t know where it is going but it is dragging France with it,” Delanoe told Le Parisien newspaper.—AFP