Will Bayrou accept Royal’s invitation?
Less than 24 hours after the first round, both Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal are trying to reach out beyond their “natural” constituencies. They both need to convince Bayrou’s supporters (again, 18% of the electorate) to give them their voices on May 6th. They did it tonight in different ways and with a different magnitude.
Sarkozy developped the idea of a “new presidential multipolar majority”, which would encompass people coming from the center.
But it is Royal, in an absolute need of gathering Bayrou’s voters around her project if she wants to have any chance to win the race, who made the news: she officially invited Bayrou to have a “public and transparent” debate to explore “convergences” and “build the future of the country together”. Issues she specifically mentionned are: institutional reform, “neutral State” and civil liberties, the “refusal to feed tensions in underpriviledged areas”, “a new start on Europe” as well as “education and environmental priorities”. Sub text here is clear: the socialists and the centrists should combine their forces to counter the so-called Sarkozy’s authoritative and kind of “law and order” approach on most of these issues. To be fair, Bayrou adopted a very similar stance than Royal’s one in the campaign leading to the first round, insisting on Sarkozy’s so-called “dangerous” way of managing these sensitive issues as well as the risks of concentration of power if he was to be elected.
In the same vein, it has been announced that Royal will have meetings with the following prominent personnalities later this week: former French Prime Minister and EU’s Commission President Jacques Delors, European MP Daniel Cohn-Bendit, and Romano Prodi, current Italian Prime Minister. All of them share the following opinion and made it pretty clear earlier in the campaign : France is ready for a “grand coalition” gathering the socialists and the centrists.
How will Bayrou react to such a direct offer? Will he decline the invitation? Will he maintain his “no right, no left, but the center” approach and try to capitalize on this for the future? Or will he cross the line and embark on an open alliance, before the second round, with one of the two candidates?
We should know more on Wednesday, when Bayrou is supposed to officially give guidances (or not) to his electorate on how to vote on May 6th. As of today, according to polls, Bayrou’s electorate would split as followed on May 6th: 54% for Sarkozy, 46% for Royal.