PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday defended his economic record as a slew of opinion polls suggested his prospects of re-election were crumbling just over a week from round one of a vote where Socialist Francois Hollande is clear frontrunner.
A CSA poll showed Hollande extending his lead over Sarkozy, with the conservative incumbent’s modest gains of the past month starting to evaporate ahead of a two-round contest taking place on April 22 and May 6.
The poll showed Hollande winning the May 6 decider with 57 percent of the vote, and two other recent surveys also suggested his chances of becoming the first left-wing president since Francois Mitterrand were strengthening.
In their latest standoff, Sarkozy said he had helped France weather economic crisis over the past four years far better than countries such as Greece or Spain, and he renewed warnings of market turmoil if rival Hollande won power.
‘What fires up the financial markets and speculation is when a country does not repay its debts, reneges on its commitments and embarks on a path of ill-considered spending,’ Sarkozy told TV news channel i>TELE.
‘Mr Hollande, by promising to raise spending without any commitment to cutbacks, is setting the stage for a confidence problem (in financial markets),’ he said.
Hollande, who says he can slash the public deficit but also promote jobs and education as he hikes tax on the rich, stuck to his line in three newspaper interviews published on Friday, saying austerity would be self-defeating if not accompanied by efforts to promote economic growth in France and Europe.
‘This I say clearly: financial markets will not lay down the law in France,’ he told the business weekly La Tribune.
Hollande has raised eyebrows in Berlin and other capitals by criticising a European accord on debt and deficit control – the fiscal compact agreed in a bid to counter the euro zone debt crisis – and saying he would open talks if elected to amend it with a pro-growth commitment.
‘Germany understands that it cannot remain an island of prosperity in an ocean of recession,’ he told Les Echos daily. (Reuters)