June 30, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-us-Sani 14, 1428

PARIS: He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere. A certified workaholic, President Nicolas Sarkozy has dominated French politics since winning power last month and has already made his mark on the international stage.

He has taken charge of the government’s reform programme, played a pivotal role in negotiating a new European Union treaty and shredded political traditions by drafting prominent left-wingers into his centre-right cabinet.

“I was not elected to do nothing,” Sarkozy said on Friday, explaining his hyper-active approach to the job.“A president doesn’t just go to international summits.”

Some newspapers have dubbed him “SuperSarko”, others have called him a “hyperpresident”, but opposition leaders complain that he is concentrating far too much power into his own hands and have branded him “Tsarkozy”.

After the semi-regal presidencies of his two predecessors, Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterrand, Sarkozy’s omnipresent, informal approach marks a dramatic change of style that could have major implications for future French governments.

Whereas Chirac and Mitterrand let their prime ministers do much of the heavy lifting in domestic affairs, Sarkozy has made clear he will act as the Chief Executive Officer of France Inc.

“Before there was a doubt about where the power lay and that was sometimes used as an excuse for not getting things done. Now it’s clear. Power lies with the president,” said Philippe Maniere, head of the Montaigne Institute – a Paris think-tank.

“This sorts out one of France’s institutional problems, not maybe on a lasting basis, but for the time being ... and that is positive, at least to get the first reforms off the ground.”

Sarkozy has already stamped his authority on foreign policy thanks to his efforts last week to convince EU leaders to accept new self-governance rules, and is switching his attention to Middle East diplomacy with a round of top-level meetings.

At home, he has taken charge of a reform of universities, after the higher education minister antagonised the unions, and says he will go to Brussels next month to explain French fiscal plans – a task that normally falls to the economy minister.

French Socialists, still smarting from their presidential and parliamentary election defeats, say he is going too far.

“The head of state cannot decide everything, discuss everything, comment on everything, concentrate everything onto himself,” said Socialist leader, Francois Hollande.

Certainly Sarkozy is taking a political risk.

When Mitterrand and Chirac suffered setbacks at home, they shunted the blame onto their prominent prime ministers and occasionally sacked them – as in 2005 when Jean-Pierre Raffarin took the rap after French voters rejected the EU constitution.

Sarkozy will have nowhere to hide if, as so often happens in France, his reforms are eventually derailed by street protests.

He also risks alienating his team of ministers, with Prime Minister Francois Fillon thus far totally obscured.

“What’s the point of Fillon?” left-leaning newspaper Liberation asked on Thursday. “Fillion is searching for a role,” right-leaning Le Figaro wrote the same day.

But some analysts question whether the changes being wrought by the rightist Sarkozy are a triumph of style over substance.

“It’s too soon to say, but I think this whole Sarkozy thing is being exaggerated,” said Dominique Reynie, a professor at the Sciences Po university in Paris.

“We are very, very far from shock politics,” he said, comparing Sarkozy’s reform programme to the moves made by the leftist Mitterrand when he took power in 1981 and ordered a wave of nationalisations that later had to be abandoned.

“There are no shocks with Sarkozy, no liberalisation of the economy. What we are seeing is pragmatic moderation,” he added.

Sarkozy’s first wave of reforms includes tax breaks, a crackdown on repeat offenders and a law to force public transport workers to provide a minimum service during strikes.

But whereas both Mitterrand and Chirac slowed dramatically after initial bursts of activity, Sarkozy has vowed not to succumb to inertia and to remain focused on his reform wish-list.

“I do not think the French want an icy president who ends up being a frosty, static mask,” Sarkozy said last week.

Those who have followed his career doubt whether he will now take his foot off the peddle, but analysts say he will have to start producing results at home to keep his electorate happy.

After an initial surge in the opinion polls, his standing slipped in the latest IPSOS survey – down three percentage points in June to 61 per cent – despite his high profile.

“There is a risk people will get annoyed by all this activity and will want concrete evidence that this is more than just talk,” said Sciences Po’s Reynie.—Reuters