Popularity of French President Hollande trails behind PM Valls
In terms of popularity, French President François Hollande and his new Prime Minister Manuel Valls are poles apart.
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Hollande’s standing with the French has slumped to a new low of 18 percent, far below the 58 percent for his new Prime Minister Manuel Valls, according to an Ifop opinion poll published on Sunday in the weekly Le Journal du Dimanche.
This is the first time the Hollande’s ratings have dipped below 20, reaffirming his position as France’s least popular president in decades.
Meanwhile, newly-appointed Valls tops the polls and has become the most popular French premier in the first month of his tenure.
The opinion polls also exposed the biggest rift – amounting to an unprecedented 40-point difference – in popularity between a French president and his prime minister.
After the Socialist party was hammered in last month’s municipal elections, a bruised Hollande was forced to sack Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrualt replacing him with tough, more conservative Interior Minister Valls.
With an unemployment rate of more than 10 percent and fear of France’s dwindling presence on the world stage, Valls – who once suggested dropping the word “socialist” from the party – embraces a more centrist, free-market economic policy than many on the Left.
He has vowed to get France on track to meet its financial obligations to the European Union, and faces the tall challenge of getting Hollande re-elected for a second five-year term in 2017.
Vall’s plan entails 50 billion euros in spending cuts by 2017 to rein in France’s public deficit and a flagging economy.
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