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Sarkozy's Security Policy Brings `Shame' on France, Socialist Aubry Says
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s security policy brings “shame” to the country and damages its image abroad, Martine Aubry, leader of the opposition Socialist Party, said today.
“This summer was the summer of shame,” Aubry said at the party’s annual conference in La Rochelle, referring to Sarkozy’s July announcement that he would deport Roma people who were in France unlawfully. She also cited Sarkozy’s proposed law to strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship if they commit serious crimes, saying the plan breaches France’s constitution.
Sarkozy has sought to tighten security following a spate of violent crime and civil disorder, including riots in the Alpine city of Grenoble last month over a fatal police shooting of an armed 27-year-old of North African origin who led them on a car chase after robbing a casino. About a quarter of all French have at least one grandparent born outside France, according to estimates from Sorbonne demographer Patrick Weil.
The Socialist Party is preparing for the 2012 presidential race and will hold primaries in the fall of 2011 to pick its frontrunner. The Socialists’ platform will be unveiled in the spring of 2011, Aubry said.
“We want to embody tomorrow’s alternative,” Aubry said in an hour-long speech to supporters. “We will be there in 2012 to build a new France.”
Aubry Victory
A poll published Aug. 25 by TNS-Sofres for Le Nouvel Observateur showed Aubry would defeat Sarkozy in the second round of the presidential race by 53 percent to 47 percent.
The same survey showed Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, beating Sarkozy by 59 percent to 41 percent in a runoff. The former Socialist finance minister, who sought his party’s nomination in 2007, has run the Washington-based IMF for the past three years and hasn’t unveiled his plans for the 2012 election.
“At a certain point he should make public his plans, because French people will need a face, rather quickly,” former Socialist Party Secretary-General Francois Hollande told I-tele television. It’s very important to French people who do not want the current president anymore to know the face of who will be next.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at Hfouquet1@bloomberg.net
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