In Paris, Bertrand Delanoe bookmark plays the rope

In Paris, Bertrand Delanoe bookmark plays the rope


Elected mayor of Paris on the line in 2001, Bertrand Delanoe should except on the ears will succeed himself mid-March, a favorite status that compelled to play the rope in the last week before the first round.

Since it was launched in the race for his re-election in the fall, polls predict a victory rather ample to édile Socialist on the UMP Francoise de Panafieu, on the evening of March 16.

But for the outgoing mayor, the issue is being played a week earlier, in the first round. To address in force negotiations alliances for the second round, he needs the most net score possible.

"The most important gathering, assembly decisive is that of March 9," he hammered at his grandfather's Zenith meeting Wednesday.

Especially since the first round takes place at the end of winter vacations in Paris and that the polls may generate positive demobilization burst left and right.

"I do not believe the great international conspiracy 'jokes Sandrine Mazetier, Socialist MP twelfth district, where Bertrand Delanoe will hold its last public meeting before the first round Thursday.

"But even when all these polls very reassuring, who say that Bertrand will be reelected in an armchair, it's a little strange," she says.

At left, we therefore euphemisms rivals in the final straight. "The ground is more fertile" in 2001, says Lyne Cohen-Solal, determined to put an end to forty years of management Tiberi in the fifth arrondissement.

In Paris, the left gets stuck with a "luxury problem," concedes Bruno Julliard. "We must manage advance. Everybody looks THE Bertrand fault," says the student leader candidate in the thirteenth district.

ZIG ZAG

In order not to render the flank to criticism from the right, Bertrand Delanoe, a broad reelection put into orbit within the Socialist Party, finds himself compelled to avoid the future of the PS or national policy in his speeches.

By ellipses, it is yet to Nicolas Sarkozy that he opposes, never quote, not Francoise de Panafieu.

The tram, Vélib, cohabitation between elderly and young children? The "Issues of civilization," he insists. And its cultural policy, it is "not bling bling."

Just one week before the first round, Francoise de Panafieu concentrating its attacks on the national ambitions that lends to his opponent.

For the UMP candidate, he plays to be the "mayor of all Paris" even though it promises to become the "mayor of all Parisians." Bertrand Delanoë a "head elsewhere" and use the capital as a mere stepping stone, warns the leader of the right.

The evidence, accuses his spokesman, the mayor went meetings where does that militants. "He needs to convince them that it does not stop there," insists Pierre-Yves de Bournazel.

The question of alliances, that the ballot Parisian premium proportional to majority favours, Bertrand Delanoe also place before a delicate equation.

Reaching out to the Greens, "friends of the majority", without closing the door on MoDem, credited double the voting intentions in the polls.

A few days before the verdict, he mentions no details a gathering of "progressive forces" but multiply tributes to the "competence" of the elect environmentalists.

According to Denis Baupin, leader of the Greens, which has raised the tone against any alliance with the centrists, discussions have begun with the entourage Bertrand Delanoe to clear convergence or "sticking points".

Without naming the party of François Bayrou, taken to Paris by Marielle de Sarnez, the Socialist mayor multiplies the calls for clarification, sometimes falling in formulas enigmatic.

"I like too much democracy for him to make zig zag. Democracy is all right," he concluded at the Zenith.