Sarkozy the unwanted

PARIS — French President Nicolas Sarkozy”s honeymoon with the media didn”t last long.

A year after he was swept to power, Mr. Sarkozy”s popularity ratings have plunged as fast as they had risen. Ambitious projects have remained on the drawing boards. And 55 percent of those who voted for him hope he will not stand again after the end of the present five-year mandate.

Although he is still flamboyant and pledging to change France, something has snapped in his relationship with the electorate, analysts say. Some of his projects now seem unreal, others too costly or unnecessary.

And the general public seemed annoyed by his penchant for luxury and high-profile romantic problems: a divorce and an almost immediate remarriage to Carla Bruni, a guitar-playing singer and former model.

In a gloomy economic climate, the weekly Paris Match estimated that 72 percent of Frenchmen are unhappy with Mr. Sarkozy”s performance and 65 percent feel that he has not fulfilled his campaign promises.

According to a telephone opinion poll ViaVoice, six out of ten voters consider the Sarkozy presidency a failure.

To the daily Le Parisien, with a popularity rating of 36 percent, Mr. Sarkozy is the least popular of seven presidents in office over the past 50 years.

Against such a background, pundits and political scientists are speculating whether France can be reformed, as the president set out to accomplish, and whether it really wants to be reformed.

The concept of a relaxed workplace remains deeply embedded in the country. There is fear of adventurous or innovative projects, and the young increasingly favor guaranteed state jobs with often lavish pensions, which Mr. Sarkozy wants to curtail.

In an exceptionally humble 100-minute television broadcast last month, Mr. Sarkozy admitted that he had made mistakes during his first year in office, that he understood the public”s disappointment but that, nevertheless, his program would continue.

“The set has changed slightly, but the show remains exactly the same,” quipped the left-wing Liberation daily.

Olivier Duhamel, a professor of political science, said, “The crux of the matter is purchasing power — the French people”s main expectation. And on this problem, I think that he has failed globally.”

In the weeks before Mr. Sarkozy completed his first year in office, there was a run on two books about his presidency: “The Emperor Has No Clothes” and “It Will End Badly.”

Mr. Sarkozy has been luckier in the field of foreign relations, with several successful trips abroad.

He said that France could rejoin NATO”s military structure, which it left in the 1960s under President Charles de Gaulle, but only if a French general is given a senior command post.

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