From the new World Media Watch up now at
http://www.zianet.com/insightanalyticalTomorrow at Buzzflash.com
4//The Independent, UK Published: 06 January 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article336762.ece CHIRAC VEERS LEFT TO SMOOTH PATH FOR FAVOURED SUCCESSOR DE VILLEPIN
By John Lichfield in Paris
President Jacques Chirac has entered what may be his last full year in politics by veering significantly to the left. M. Chirac, a connoisseur of U-turns and zig-zags, has used new year receptions to announce a flurry of left-leaning policies, including a radical shift in the financing of health and social security spending. He has 17 months remaining in his second term and his poll ratings are at a record low.
The sharp turn is seen as an attempt to fulfil M. Chirac's last remaining political ambition: to ruin the presidential chances of his former protégé, the Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.
President Chirac, 73, weakened by health problems and his defeat in the referendum on the EU constitution last May, has probably abandoned hope of a third term. By embracing ideas from trades unions and the centre-left opposition, M. Chirac is preparing for an aggressively centrist, and even leftist, campaign next year by his preferred successor, the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin.
M. Sarkozy has called for a "rupture" with a "failed" French political and social model and a move towards a lower-spending, less intrusive state. But all the new policies announced by M. Chirac this week are intended to suggest the French model of high-spending and generous welfare protection is compatible with a forward-looking, ground-breaking country.
The intention seems to be paint the popular M. Sarkozy as an ultra-liberal ideologue and a threat to the French way of life. "Let's escape from this endless debate on the 'French model'," President Chirac said. "You don't change what you are."
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