Sarkozy has no chance to win election

TEHRAN, Feb. 26(MNA) -- After months of vacillation, French President Nicolas Sarkozy officially announced his intention to run for a second term in the country’s upcoming presidential election. However, his chief rival, Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, has a comfortable lead in opinion poll and has called on Sarkozy to apologize to French citizens for his failure to properly manage the country. Meanwhile, the recent economic downgrade of France by the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s has intensified the pressure on Sarkozy. France was one of the main countries that lent huge sums of money to the ailing economies of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. The inability of these countries to pay back their loans in the midst of the euro zone’s debt crisis has created many problems for the French government. This was the main reason behind the decision to downgrade the country’s credit rating. The worsening economic crisis has changed France’s political atmosphere. Sarkozy is trying to manage an economy reeling from nearly zero growth. In mid-January 2012, the unemployment rate was 9.9 percent, a 12-year high, and rising. The government’s austerity measures, including the unpopular pension reform program, are some of the other factors behind the precipitous decline in Sarkozy’s popularity. The French Socialists are making every effort to highlight Sarkozy’s role in bringing the country to the economic doldrums. They also want to create a fair economic system in which the wealthier classes of society pay more taxes. Hollande, for example, has often said that Sarkozy has spent his time in office nurturing the wealthy instead of feeding the needy. Based on the results of opinion polls, there is a great possibility that Sarkozy will lose the election. A significant number of the ballots will also be cast for other parties. Marine Le Pen of the National Front will continue to advocate reducing immigration and exiting from the euro. She must gather signatures from 500 elected officials to show she has the institutional support needed to appear on the ballot. The candidate of the Left Front (Front de Gauche), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who was the minister of vocational education from 2000 to 2002, also has a good chance to get many votes. The fact that a number of parties will get a significant percentage of the vote shows how fed up the French people are with their current political situation. However, they are most of all dissatisfied with the way Sarkozy has ruled their country over the past five years.