Ad’ campaign to promote Sarkozy’s election promise

The French government has launched a media blitz in an attempt to convince people that it really is winning the battle to increase purchasing power.

In the coming weeks the French will be treated to over 1,600 TV commercials as well as Internet advertising and full page spreads in the national and regional daily newspapers.

It’s all part of a drive by the government to get across three measures it has taken to increase purchasing power; the drop in the security deposit required for renting and buying properties, tax breaks for students and untaxed overtime for those who want it.

Nicolas Sarkozy's major promise during his campaign last year in the run up to the presidential elections was that he would increase the purchasing power of the average man and woman on the street here in France.

The solution to boost the country’s sluggish economy was simple, he maintained. He would free up the job market and release businesses from the shackles of the 35-hour working week thereby giving people the chance to put in overtime without it being taxed.

A general "work more to earn more" mantra echoed along the corridors of power and would make its way through the land and eventually into the pockets of the masses. At least that was the premise.

Except it hasn't really turned out that way at all. By all accounts people are still feeling the pinch, the economy isn’t booming and France remains a country in which half the population earns less than €1,500 per month.

The media has been especially critical with Sarkozy and his government, continually questioning when the promised increase in purchasing power would actually happen.

Sarkozy, whose approval ratings have been hovering around the 35 per cent mark for a couple of months now, even admitted in his 90-minute long televised interview back in April that there had been a failure in his fiscal package - but only in terms of communication.

And that’s very much the line his government is now taking in an effort to convince people that it’s on the right track.

At the launch of the campaign earlier this week French prime minister, François Fillon, insisted that measures had been in place for over a year to boost purchasing power but the message hadn’t come across to the general public because the fiscal changes that had been made were complicated and difficult to explain.

That at least was his justification for blowing over €4 million of taxpayers’ money on a television and press campaign to explain how the government is going to win the battle to increase purchasing power.

All well and good but critics point out that the media blitz could also be interpreted as propaganda on behalf of Sarkozy’s ruling Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) party, aware that it had failed to deliver on an election promise but trying to convince the public otherwise.

The government can also expect to face an uphill battle in its attempts to convince a largely sceptical public if the latest opinion polls are to be believed. They show that around 63 per cent think the government is failing in its job to run the economy properly.

Mind you both Sarkozy and Fillon can take some comfort from the fact that the French traditionally seem to believe that their governments aren’t really up to the job of running the economy properly.

A similar poll in 2006 when Dominique de Villepin was prime minister showed 74 per cent unhappy with the economy, and under his predecessor Jean-Pierre Raffarin in 2005, the level was at 69 per cent. So on that score at least Sarkozy-Fillon are doing all right.

As a corollary, there’s a perhaps a certain irony in the government using TV commercials to get its message across at exactly the same time as it’s finalising plans for dropping advertising from all public channels.

Maybe for once, the chairman of the Socialist party, François Hollande, summed up best what many are thinking he when he said "quand on n'a rien à dire en politique, on fait sa pub".

Which roughly translates as “When you have nothing to say in politics, you talk about what you’re doing rather than what you’re achieving.” – pretty much a definition of “spin”.

Faltering fortunes

If a week is proverbially a long time in politics, then eight months must seem like an eternity to some.

And so it would seem for a majority of the French, who according to the latest opinion poll – yes, yet another one – give the thumbs down to the way their president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is going about his daily business.

For the first time since coming to office last May, Sarkozy’s popularity rating has dipped into the negative.

While 45 percent of those questioned are still happy with their president’s “Bling Bling” style leadership, 48 percent aren’t.

Confirmation, as if it were needed, that perhaps the French are getting more than just a little tired with Sarkozy’s shenanigans.

Top of the list of complaints – and there are many – is his failure to live up to his election promises, and in particular the undertaking to increase peoples’ purchasing power.

Certainly Sarkozy has been firing on all cylinders for quite some time now, and his energy is immense. But there has simply been no evidence of an increase in the standard of living, and the euro in peoples’ pockets is not stretching as far as they had been promised.

His defence has been that things take time, there’s no money in the state coffers to finance reform programmes and that people need to “work more to earn more”. The mantra does not seem to have won him too many friends among the general public, especially as the only financial concessions Sarkozy has made so far are tax breaks for the already well off.

Of course his constant media presence outside the political arena hasn’t helped matters much either and in particular the way his private life has made the headlines.

Divorce, a new girlfriend and rumours of marriage – all in the space of just three months – are perhaps proving just too testing for the French. They’re not used to seeing their presidents hang out their laundry, and even though there is undoubtedly a huge voyeuristic element (gossip boosts circulation and viewing figures) it just ain’t what they expect from their politicians and certainly not their head honcho.

Some in his party have claimed that the poor man has been “harassed” by a media, which has constantly reported every step of his private life. Clearly on current evidence, he has been a totally unwilling accomplice.

Meanwhile at a time when Sarkozy’s popularity is taking a dip, that of his seemingly long-suffering second in command, the prime minister François Fillon, is witnessing a resurgence.

Now Fillon might not exactly be the most charismatic politician ever to have made the big time – some might say he makes Britain’s Gordon Brown look like the life and soul of any party – but he is generally seen as trustworthy, cautious and dependable - in fact almost the complete opposite to the president.

And while he’s probably never going to hit the highs (or lows) of someone like Sarkozy in the popularity stakes, the latest figures have him fast catching up with his boss, with a 43 per cent approval rating.

Fillon’s self-effacing style may go down well with a public wearied by Sarkozy’s exhausting overexposure, but there is a certain false modesty in play by the prime minister.

When asked exactly what he thinks of what many perceive as the public excesses of his boss, he refuses to comment, maintaining that in his 30-year-long career in politics he has always been loathe to pass judgement on others’ private lives. A statement heartily repeated by most of his government’s ministers.

The problem for Fillon and of course the rest of the cabinet, is that they really are only secure in their jobs for as long as they remain in Sarkozy’s good books. He can hire, fire and tinker with, whenever he sees fit.

But as the latest polls shows even he will have to keep an eye on his ratings.

There’s a limit as to how prepared the French are willing to tolerate simple bad manners such as when Sarkozy was caught on camera writing a text massage during the welcoming ceremony of his state visit to Saudi Arabia earlier this week.

The president has made the local elections here in March a vote of confidence in himself, his government and his policies. He could be in for an unpleasant surprise.

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