Media sees Chirac tipping point

Monday, September 5, 2005

Media believes Chirac is now unlikely to run again.

PARIS, France (Reuters) -- President Jacques Chirac's sudden eye problem may be minor in medical terms, but it looks like the tipping point in his political career and the start of an all-out struggle to succeed him, French media said on Monday.

Chirac's doctors and aides have issued reassuring reports on the head of state, 72, who was rushed to hospital on Friday with severe headache and vision problems caused by what they called a "vascular accident." He is due to stay there for a week.

Combined with low popularity ratings and a heavy defeat when voters rejected the European Constitution in May, editorialists said Chirac's first major health problem in 10 years as president meant he could not realistically run again in 2007.

"In the universe of signs and symbols that is politics, there are key moments that crystallize an evolution," the conservative daily Le Figaro wrote.

"All signs say the head of state's health problem is benign," it said. "Strictly speaking, nothing has happened. But everyone feels somehow that something has tipped over."

The business daily Les Echos said a third term for Chirac was already looking improbable before he entered hospital. "It became even more improbable this weekend," it said.

If he has no prospect of running in the next presidential poll, Chirac is a lame duck surrounded by rivals for his post.

Rivals line up Chirac's health problem had an immediate impact on his Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, raising the stakes for two potential successors at a weekend meeting of party activists in the Atlantic resort of La Baule.

Tipped off personally by Chirac, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin informed his rival, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, of the president's health problem at the last minute. He announced the news on Saturday, using his inside information to grab the headlines.

By Sunday, Villepin was talking like a candidate, presenting himself as a man of "change in continuity," as opposed to Sarkozy's call for a clean break with the past.

"Until Saturday evening, Dominique de Villepin had the status of prime minister," LCI television commented. "Since Sunday morning, he is in the role of heir."

Villepin, a former foreign and interior minister who has never run for elected office, has done better than expected in his first three months and is now openly rivaling Sarkozy, who until recently seemed unstoppable.

Chirac's health problem also presents a strategic challenge for Sarkozy. "Until now, his adversary was an ageing president," Les Echos wrote. "Now it's a bouncy prime minister who fights with the same arms as he uses."

"On the right, there will be a pre- and a post-La Baule," Figaro wrote. "Jacques Chirac is departing. Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin are advancing. They are two temperaments, two strategies -- the rebel and the loyalist.

"The roles have been divided up for 2007."

The left-wing daily Liberation suggested Chirac should step down now to spare the country a long power struggle it compared to the family rivalries in the U.S. television series Dallas.

"But Jacques Chirac is not the type to let go of a single crumb of power for a single second," it wrote. "So we're heading for 20 months of 'Dallas' in Chirac-land."

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/09/05/france.chirac.reut/index.html