Prime minister versus president

摘要

It should have been so simple. Lionel Jospin, France's Socialist prime minister for the past four years, would return from holiday and smoothly manage his campaign to unseat the conservative Jacques Chirac in next spring's presidential election. After all, President Chirac is facing a tide of scandal that in most other western democracies would long ago have swept aside the leader, and for most of the past two years the economy has performed well enough to satisfy voters and foreign investors alike.