This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 PARIS 005099 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DEPT ALSO FOR DRL/IL, EUR/WE, EUR/ERA, EUR/PPD, INR/EUC AND 
EB 
DEPT OF LABOR FOR ILAB 
DEPT OF COMMERCE FOR ITA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV ELAB EU FR PINR SOCI ECON
SUBJECT: SARKOZY DEFIES CHIRAC, THEN RETREATS -- AS 
"LIBERAL" VERSUS "STATIST" DIFFERENCES IN CENTER-RIGHT COME 
TO THE FORE 
 
REF: A. (A) PARIS 5045 
 
     ¶B. (B) PARIS 4954 
 
SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED -- HANDLE ACCORDINGLY 
 
SUMMARY 
------- 
¶1.  (SBU) France's Interior Minister and 2007 presidential 
hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy has again challenged President 
Chirac's credibility as a leader.  In highly publicized 
remarks on July 14, Sarkozy compared Chirac to King Louis 
XVI.  (Louis XVI is identified in France with ingnoring the 
winds of change sweeping through the country on the eve of 
the French revolution.)  In a speech a week earlier, Sarkozy 
questioned the value of the French social model.  On July 19, 
Sarkozy -- in his capacity as president of the center-right 
Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party -- received Angela 
Merkel, head of Germany's center-right Christian Democratic 
Union (CDU) (reftel A).  Both called for changing the social 
model shared by France and Germany.  President Chirac's 
insistent defense of the French social model contrasts ever 
more sharply with Sarkozy's insistence on the need for 
deeper, more free-market oriented reform.  With tremendous 
disarray on the center-left, it is these contending visions 
on the center-right that are coming to dominate the French 
political scene. END SUMMARY. 
 
ASSAILING CHIRAC'S LACK OF VISION 
--------------------------------- 
¶2.  (SBU) On Bastille Day, July 14, the Interior Minister 
usually hosts a garden party after the traditional Bastille 
Day parade.  This year, as is most unusual, Sarkozy made a 
point of inviting the press.  At the event, he delivered a 
personal, political manifesto to the assembled guests and 
journalists.  Sarkozy's "rival" garden party, as the press 
billed it, took place at the same time as President Chirac 
was conducting the traditional Bastille Day interview during 
the Presidential garden party at the Elysee Palace (reftel 
B).  In his speech at the interior ministry, Sarkozy again 
sounded the core themes ever more closely associated with 
him: France needs more market-driven opportunity, less state 
involvement in the economy, and a political elite connected 
to the concerns of ordinary people.  Sarkozy compared Chirac 
to Louis XVI who "fiddled with the locks at Versailles while 
France was rumbling with discontent."  Sarkozy's direct, very 
public assault on Chirac's credibility as a leader reflects 
his impatience with -- indeed, contempt for -- Chirac's lack 
of any future-oriented political vision.  Sarkozy portrayed 
himself as committed to "doing my best" to end "immobilism 
and the masking of the facts," and provide "effective 
responses to the concerns of ordinary Frenchmen and women." 
 
DEFENDERS OF THE OFFICE TAKE OFFENSE 
------------------------------------ 
¶3. (SBU) Predictably, a portion of the public felt Sarkozy 
had gone too far, insulting the President of the Republic and 
the dignity of the office.  Chirac's supporters, 
specifically, President of the National Assembly Jean-Louis 
Debre, played to this current in public opinion by accusing 
Sarkozy of "harassing the President."  In addition to 
mediatizing his garden party, Sarkozy had, a few days before, 
harshly questioned the relevance of Chirac,s Bastille Day 
interview.  ("Why does Chirac perpetuate this tradition?" 
Sarkozy reportedly asked.  "It's not relevant at the 
moment").  Appearing on a public affairs broadcast, Debre in 
turn attacked Sarkozy's credibility, asking, "What does the 
interior minister want?  To be thrown out of the government 
and appear as a victim?  To show his displeasure at not being 
chosen prime minister?  To prevent the success of the 
(Villepin) government to further his career?"  In response, 
having successfully reminded the public that he is a 
challenger of the establishment and advocate of change, 
Sarkozy backed off.  A week after Bastille Day, in an 
interview with a leading daily, Sarkozy depicted himself as a 
team player, committed to supporting the success of the 
Villepin government, of which he is the second-ranking member. 
 
COMMENT: SWITCHING BETWEEN COMPLEMENTARY ROLES 
--------------------------------------------- - 
¶4.  (SBU) Sarkozy's image management is a difficult balancing 
act.  On the one hand, he needs to keep projecting himself as 
a credible leader of change.  This requires periodic sallying 
forth to excoriate the highly unpopular political class to 
maintain his image as an alternative to that class.  It also 
requires regularly affirming his pro-market, reformist views, 
which are considerably more "liberal" (in the Europeans sense 
of the term) than those of Chirac and most of the political 
elite.  On the other hand, in order to reassure doubters 
among the public of his steadiness -- his fitness for high 
office -- Sarkozy is also intent on performing well in a key 
establishment role -- interior minister.  Central to 
achieving his ambitions is convincing a majority of voters in 
2007 that he can responsibly lead France's successful 
adaptation to globalization, as Chirac has markedly failed to 
do.  Interior Ministry issues -- counter-terrorism, safe 
streets, immigration, etc. -- are issues that matter to 
middle class voters.  Credibility in the quintessentially 
establishment role of interior minister is every bit as 
important to Sarkozy as is his credibility as an 
anti-establishment reformer.  His message dismissing Chirac 
and bluntly questioning France's social model is as carefully 
calculated as are his initiatives and image as interior 
minister -- for example, his calls for a tougher immigration 
regime, and his unfailing, and well publicized, appearances 
at the funerals of police and firemen killed in the line of 
duty. 
 
COMMENT CONTINUED: CONTENDING VISIONS ON THE CENTER-RIGHT 
--------------------------------------------- ------------ 
¶5.  (SBU) With the center-left Socialist Party (PS) in deep 
disarray, the run-up to the 2007 presidential election will 
likely see accentuation of contending visions on the 
center-right.  The outlook of Chirac and Villepin is that the 
French social model can be successfully adapted, without 
major change in the direction of social and economic policy 
and without a significant shift in the role of the state 
throughout French society.  Sarkozy is challenging that 
"neo-Gaullist" approach.  He believes that the government, as 
led by the political class, is not responding to the needs of 
ordinary people.  Successful reform then requires 
considerable change in the ethos of the political class, 
along with considerable change in the direction of social and 
economic policy.  In Sarkozy's view, without such deeper 
change, France's huge and omnipresent bureaucracy will remain 
more a hindrance to, than enabler of, economic initiative and 
social harmony.  End Comment. 
STAPLETON