MOST people say he is doing a poor job, his reforms are faltering and the economy is floundering. On the face of it, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has little to celebrate as he marks his second anniversary in office on Wednesday, with unemployment surging, debt soaring and nationwide street protests challenging his every decision. Look behind the gloomy headlines however, and a slightly rosier picture emerges for the hyperactive French leader. Although his own ratings have stagnated, his UMP party is still expected to win next month's European elections against a deeply divided left and polls suggest he is well positioned to secure another term when his first expires in 2012. “Given the political landscape, Sarkozy has succeeded in limiting the damage,” said Jerome Fourquet, deputy director of the IFOP polling unit. “His great luck is that there is no credible alternative being put forward by the opposition.” While that is good news for Sarkozy, it is not necessarily what France needs, and political analysts say the president must start putting more meat on his reform agenda to ensure the state emerges fitter and leaner from the economic crisis. Sarkozy swept to power in 2007 promising a radical overhaul of France, whose long-neglected structural failings have condemned the economy to years of under-achievement. He subsequently flooded parliament with legislation, re-writing the tax code, shaking up the underperforming universities, effectively burying the infamous 35-hour week introduced by the Socialists, and ending generous, state-sector pension privileges. But the reform drive has since lost focus and Sarkozy risks suffering the same fate as his predecessor Jacques Chirac, who let France drift during his 12 years in power after his initial burst of activity was smothered by protests and poor judgment. Poor scorecard The Thomas More Institute, an independent think-tank, on Tuesday released its scorecard for Sarkozy's presidential progress, rating him just 10.5 out of 20. Although it found that the government had started work on implementing some 77 percent of Sarkozy's promised reforms, only 40 percent of them had actually been completed, and then often in a watered-down version of the initial pledge. “Sarkozy has achieved a very average score,” said Jean-Thomas Lesueur, the institute's head. “The work rate is considerable and there is a coherency to what he is doing, but the quality of the reforms has not been very good and the results have fallen short of expectations.” Worse still for Sarkozy is a generalised confusion over what he stands for, with no predominant or totemic reform emerging from the frenetic activity and no priorities coming to the fore. Mounting economic woes have added to his problems, with the politically sensitive unemployment rate set to jump to nearly 10 percent this year from just 7.8 percent in 2008. The European Commission predicts the French economy will shrink 3 percent this year compared with an average fall of 4 percent for the whole euro zone, but says France will emerge more slowly from the recession than its bigger neighbour, Germany. Sarkozy has presented himself as a man of action, and although the world recession is clearly not his fault, his inability to shield France has dismayed many voters. One TSN Sofres poll this week showed that some 65 per cent of respondents said they were “disappointed” in Sarkozy, while other surveys put his approval rating at around 36-40 percent. However, both Chirac and former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand had even worse scores two years into their first mandate, only to go on to win re-election. Other polls show Sarkozy clearly ahead of the field of probable 2012 contenders. Toning down the bling Sarkozy has learnt from his early months in office, when his flashy excesses earned him the nickname President Bling Bling. He now rarely wears sunglasses in public, has stopped ceaseless phone messaging and has forged a more harmonious relationship with his cabinet, especially Prime Minister Francois Fillon. As re-election becomes more of an issue, some analysts expect him to play a less high-profile role on the domestic stage and push his ministers more into the firing line.
