The president has not ruled out a third term. Now he will have competition from within his party.

Mario Canseco

The expected confirmation of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) next weekend will cap a shaky year for Jacques Chirac. The French president's approval rating was at 54 per cent in this month's BVA/L'Express poll, well below the numbers he boasted in late 2002 and early 2003 after opposing the war in Iraq.

Last March, France's centre-right parties had a dismal showing in the regional elections, a fact that precipitated a series of cabinet shuffles. Chirac kept prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin in his post, and switched Sarkozy from the interior portfolio to finance.

Sarkozy's popularity has grown as a result of his new responsibilities. In an April BVA/Le Bleu de Profession Politique survey, 66 per cent of respondents thought Sarkozy would be successful as France's finance minister.

The eventual aspirations of the 49-year-old finance minister are not a secret. In June, a BVA/Marianne poll found that Sarkozy would defeat two high-profile prospective centre-left candidates—former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former prime minister Laurent Fabius—in a presidential election.

For his part, the 71-year-old Chirac has not ruled out standing for a third term in office. The president was first elected in 1995, and earned a second term in a run-off over Jean-Marie Le Pen in May 2002.

In July, Chirac said that he would not allow Sarkozy to keep his post as finance minister and head the UMP, saying this would undermine prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. In September, an Ipsos/Le Point survey placed Sarkozy as the top rated politician in the country with a 60 per cent approval rating, with Chirac at 49 per cent and Raffarin at 36 per cent.

Raffarin's numbers have been consistently lower than Chirac's—28 per cent this month—as controversial reforms to the health service and the pension system were blamed for the centre-right's acute losses in this year's regional and European Parliament elections.

Still, the fundamental issue for the 2007 legislative and presidential elections is job creation. France's unemployment rate for the month of September was 9.6 per cent, the second-highest in the Group of Seven (G-7) industrialized nations.

Earlier this month, Chirac faced a new crisis in the Ivory Coast. France had brokered a peace deal in the African nation last year, but the caretaker government headed by Laurent Gbagbo only administers the southern half of the country. The armed group New Forces—led by Guillaume Soro—controls the northern half, including the city of Bouake.

On Nov. 6, Gbagbo contravened the truce by ordering an air strike on suspected rebel bases, killing nine French peacekeepers and an American aid worker in the process. France responded by obliterating the Ivorian air force, an act that led to the evacuation of thousands of foreigners after pro-government rioters took to the streets. The conflict will continue to affect the world's top exporter of cocoa.

As the Ivorian situation unfolds, the much-anticipated Chirac-Sarkozy showdown is already underway in the public opinion arena. In this month's BVA/L'Express poll, 53 per cent of respondents viewed the finance minister as a hindrance for the president, and 66 per cent considered Sarkozy's desire to head the UMP as the starting point of an eventual presidential run. Current interior minister Dominique de Villepin—who commanded international attention in the prelude to the Iraq war—might become a factor in the UMP's nomination contest.

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