Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande are to face each other in a live TV debate on Wednesday night – a tense verbal showdown seen as the rightwing president's last chance to swing Sunday's presidential vote in his favour.
The French president is six to eight points behind the Socialist frontrunner Hollande in the polls, despite an aggressive campaign. Sarkozy has reportedly told ministers that he will use the debate to "explode" Hollande. Both candidates have warned they do not view the two-and-a-half-hour standoff as a "boxing match", but French newspapers were billing it as a fight for political survival: The Last Duel or The Final Confrontation.
With an expected 20 million viewers, the presidential TV debate is a classic set-piece in French politics. It makes more impact as a personality clash than a detailed deconstruction of manifestos. In the past it has produced scathing put-downs and killer one-liners, such as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's snub to François Mitterrand "You do not have the monopoly of the heart", Mitterrand's belittling of Jacques Chirac, or Sarkozy telling the Socialist Ségolène Royal in 2007 that she had lost her nerve. » | Angelique Chrisafis in Paris | Wednesday, May 02, 2012
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