Chirac struggling for victory in his own backyard

Chirac struggling for victory in his own backyard
The Daily Telegraph
By Colin Randall in Sarran

In the enchanting village where Jacques Chirac and his wife Bernadette have their country retreat, two images offer snapshots of the limits of the president's sway in a country preparing to cast judgment on his European gamble.

The first, greeting visitors on the main road leading into Sarran, tucked away in the soft green hills of the Corrèze in south-western France, is the lavishly-funded museum named after the president.

Inside is a display of thousands of gifts collected on Mr Chirac's world travels during 10 years in office. There are cowboy boots from President Clinton, items honouring Mr Chirac's beloved Sumo wrestling and a porcelain bowl from Tony Blair.

The second image meets the eye deeper into the village. At the polling station where inhabitants will cast their votes in tomorrow's referendum on the EU constitution, rival campaigners have plastered their posters side byside. In tune with the overwhelming majority of polls throughout the 10-week campaign, Non outnumbers Oui.

The Corrèze enjoys no immunity from the potent mix of anger, fear andtruculent defiance that has swept France.

Exasperated with high unemployment and a weak and accident-prone government committed to unpopular reform of health, education and labour practices, the electorate has so far resisted its president's pleas to distinguish between the referendum question and domestic discontent.

If the 72-year-old French leader fails to win over the army of wavering voters, it will be a judgment on his presidency as much as a rejection of the unloved text.

"Political leaders have lost a great deal of the credibility and respect they once had," said Michel Caillard, who leads Mr Chirac's UMP party inTulle.

"It is not all the fault of media caricatures. The political class fails to connect as it should with citizens, and we see the consequences in this difficult campaign."

Although both of the main parties have implored the country to vote Yes, enthusiasm for the treaty is also muted among their own faithful. The broader public is even less persuaded of its merits.

The Socialist leader, François Hollande, is Tulle's mayor and MP but has struggled locally as well as nationally to impress the voters with his Yes campaign.

When he toured the town's riverside market recently, even the cheesemonger was prominently displaying a No slogan beside the products on his stall.

One of Mr Caillard's colleague's who leads the UMP youth section in the same constituency is also rooted in the No camp, driven by concern over the loss of French sovereignty in an enlarged and more integrated Europe.

The UMP mayor of Beynac-et-Cazenac, Pascal Coste, will vote Yes but with deep reluctance. Mr Coste is closely linked to the farming community.

"They dislike the bureaucracy imposed by Brussels, "Mr Caillard said. "I only hope that we have persuaded them that a strong France within a strong Europe offers the best chance of protecting their interests."

The Corrèze famously voted no in the 1992 Maastricht referendum. In the squeaky clean office where extracts from the 2005 treaty are displayed alongside hostile analysis, Left-wing activists from Tulle's People and Culture Association are upbeat about the prospects of another upset. "I want the message from here to be that we were not prepared to vote for a bad constitution just because we were told it was the least worst option," said Manée Teyssandier, 56, a school careers' adviser and president of the association.

Dominique Albaret, 51, in charge of the office, said: "The fact that we have to explain the text, that many people find they cannot understand it, is the very first reason why no one should vote for it.

"Whatever Chirac says, he has to renegotiate it."

The most eye-catching part of the montage borrows the words of 18th-century French revolutionaries who declared that people forever retained the right to revise and reform a constitution but had no right to subject future generations to its laws.

"That may have come from people who cut off a lot of heads," Mr Albaretsaid. "But it neatly sums up what we feel today."