French president apologises for causing 'misunderstanding' as he tries to soften image to improve ratings
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 November 2010 17.08 GMT
Nicolas Sarkozy has admitted that he was wrong to create a ministry of immigration and national identity and that his nationwide debate on what it means to be French had led to tension and misunderstanding.
In a primetime TV interview last night, the French president took the out-of-character step of analysing his mistakes and apologising as he tried to present a more humble side of his personality before the difficult battle to be re-elected in 2012.
Sarkozy said he had given up on the terminology "national identity", saying he was personally responsible for the fact it had "sparked misunderstanding" and created tension. It was a remarkable U-turn on one of his ideological cornerstones.
The ministry of immigration and national identity was a key feature of Sarkozy's last presidential campaign, designed to win over far-right voters from the National Front and restore national pride to a country undergoing what he called an "identity crisis".
But the creation of the ministry prompted protests from the left, and from historians and academics who said it stigmatised immigrants and suggested France's vast number of citizens with foreign parents were somehow a threat to the nation.
In his reshuffle at the weekend, Sarkozy dropped the national identity tag and brought immigration back under the auspices of the interior ministry.
However, on television he was defiant over his hardline stance on immigration, saying that "in effect" his policy had not changed and refusing to back down on his round-ups and expulsions of Roma.
He said even if he had "given up on the wording 'national identity'", he would not give up on the principles of his crack-down on immigration. France's system of integrating immigrants had broken down and if the nation did not "master the flow of immigrants" it would lead to the collapse of French integration, he added.
He defended the ban on women wearing Muslim full-face coverings in public, saying: "In the French republic, we don't want women shut behind a prison, albeit one made out of fabric." He said there would be no minarets in France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe.
Sarkozy's unusually understated and businesslike TV appearance was aimed at toning down his hyperactive, volatile image. But his veneer of calm cracked a couple of times when he raged at his interviewers' questions about his Roma policy and accusations that the Elysée supervised the bugging of journalists.
The French president is aware that the biggest stumbling block to re-election in 2012 is his own personality. His approval ratings have plummeted to a record-low 30%, which the historian Marcel Gauchet recently put down to his image as a "caricature narcissistic tyrant".
He must also reassure a country struggling to lift itself out of the crisis and address the problem of high unemployment among the young and the over-50s. He is under pressure to correct his image as a "president of the rich" by reforming elements of his tax policy seen as too favourable to the wealthy. He said he would not announce whether he would run for re-election until autumn next year.
Meanwhile, the French office of national statistics today produced the first official figures on employment discrepancy between French citizens with immigrant parents and those with French parents.
French men with parents from the Maghreb had an employment rate of 65%, compared with 86% for those with French parents. French women with Maghreb roots had a 56% employment rate compared with 74% for those with French families. The statistics office suggested that discrimination potentially played a large part in the difference.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
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