NICOLAS SARKOZY’S attempt to be reelected French president appeared to be crumbling yesterday as his Socialist rival François Hollande opened up a yawning gap in the opinion polls.
Several former Right-wing government ministers also came out against Mr Sarkozy ahead of Sunday’s first round.
Fadela Amara, the former town planning minister and a one-time star of Mr Sarkozy’s ethnically diverse “rainbow” cabinet, became the latest political figure to desert the embattled incumbent, whose popularity is lower than any other French president seeking re-election.
That followed assertions a day earlier that Jacques Chirac would vote for Mr Hollande because the front-runner shared his “humanism” and political roots in the rural Corrèze region, where both built a power base.
Other former ministers close to Mr Chirac followed suit, including Brigitte Girardin, the former overseas minister, who said she wished to “end policies that for five years have weakened the country [and] divided the French”.
Corinne Lepage, an ecologist environ- ment minister in a previous centre-right government, said she would back Mr Hollande because Mr Sarkozy had veered too far to the Right.
Others to jump ship included Martin Hirsch, the former high commissioner on poverty, Azouz Begag, the equal opportunities junior minister, and Jean-jacques Aillagon, the former culture minister.
The Sarkozy camp was hit with the most damning opinion poll for weeks, which showed Mr Hollande had opened a five-point lead for the first round of voting and a 16-point lead in voting intentions for the May 6 run-off. Mr Sarkozy briefly overtook Mr Hollande in polls for round one following the Toulouse murders by an Islamist gunman. But the Socialist has made steady gains in recent days in most polls.
The CSA survey gave him 29 per cent of the first round vote, up two points from the previous survey, against 24 per cent for Mr Sarkozy, down two points.
Mr Sarkozy’s campaign was also hit by a potentially damaging revelation yesterday when it became known that his top donors met on Sunday at the Hotel Crillon, one of Paris’s most expensive and select venues — a PR gaffe given his attempt to shed his “president of the rich” tag. “That sums up his presidency,” said Mr Hollande. “He started in a top restaurant [Le Fouquet’s] and ends up in a grand hotel with the same guests.”
Marine Le Pen, the Far-right candidate, strengthened her third place with 17 per cent in the CSA poll, apparently buoyed by a return to the National Front’s anti-foreigner and anti-europe fundamentals that took pride of place in her final rally in Paris on Tuesday night. Jean-luc Mélenchon, the hard-left anticapitalist firebrand, is on 15 per cent and François Bayrou, the centrist, on 10.