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PARIS - In a glitzy ceremony designed to sweeten an atmosphere of poison and backbiting, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday formally launched his campaign to be France's next president.
Choreographed adulation by a packed arena of 78,000 members of the governing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) greeted Sarkozy after it was announced he had picked up 98.1 per cent of the vote of the country's biggest conservative party.
The ballot's outcome had never been in doubt as Sarkozy, 51, was the only contender for the party's choice in the April elections.
What was a surprise, though, was that only 69 per cent of the 338,000 UMP members had voted - a tally that reflected some of the bitter divisions sown by Sarkozy's single-minded drive for power.
Loathed by President Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy has spent the past five years sidelining his rivals on the right and wrenching control of the UMP from Chirac in order to turn it into his electoral vehicle.
The outcome now pitches Sarkozy against the Socialists' Segolene Royal, neck-and-neck with him for popularity in the opinion polls, in the two-round fight for the Elysee presidential palace.
In his acceptance speech, Sarkozy implicitly acknowledged he had hardly received a universal endorsement from the UMP, and sought to tone down the image that many in the French public find abrasive, shallow or opportunistic.
"All my life I have dreamed of being useful to France, to my country, my nation," Sarkozy said. "Today you have allowed me to realise the first stage of that dream."
He expressed "respect" for Chirac as one of the leading figures of the Gaullist movement that had inspired him, the son of Jewish-Hungarian immigrants.
"All these men taught me, a little Frenchman of mixed blood, the love of France and the pride to be French," he declared.
For Chirac, 74, Sarkozy's triumph is one of the most bitter pills he's had to swallow in a political career spanning half a century.
In 1976, at the very same venue, Chirac founded the Rally for the Republic (RPR), which he turned into the UMP in 2002. Three decades ago, Chirac was a father-figure to Sarkozy, carefully nurturing the loyal and energetic young man's career.
Sarkozy was selected to head the RPR's youth wing, his election was secured for the safe seat of the prosperous Paris suburb of Neuilly and within a few years he was RPR secretary-general.
In 1993, though, came the big falling-out. Sarkozy sided with Edouard Balladur as candidate for the 1995 presidential campaign, and Chirac has never forgiven him.
But, smart and energetic, apparently sensing that the forces of history were behind him, Sarkozy carefully plotted his comeback. He used his position as Interior Minister from 2002 to become a headline-making figure and in 2004 seized control of the UMP itself in defiance of the ageing president and his loyalists.
The UMP spent €3.5 million ($6.5 million) for yesterday's ceremony, hiring eight high-speed trains and 520 coaches to shuttle the faithful to the Porte de Versailles venue on the rim of Paris. After the ballot result was announced, the UMP launched a campaign website, complete with an online television channel - "NSTV", for "Nicolas Sarkozy Television".
Sarkozy had worked hard to chip away at the opposition from the Chirac crowd. He managed to get endorsements from former Prime Minister Alain Juppe and from Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, both of them popular with the UMP grassroots. But Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who is said to have a seething hatred of Sarkozy, both pointedly stayed away.
Derided by intellectuals and spun against by Chirac and Villepin, Sarkozy has the right to savour his moment of glory. After it, though, comes a bigger question: can he win the presidency itself?
There, Sarkozy's careful planning may come unstuck. He must reckon with the risk of a late surge for the ultra-rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen - or the emergence of a rival mainstream conservative who could splinter the right-wing vote, both of which could leave the way open for Royal.
True to their toxic relationship, Chirac himself has slyly fostered rumours that he may run again.
"That is something worth considering, and I will give it due thought," Chirac said last week.
INTHE RUNNNING
* Nicolas Sarkozy: Interior minister and head of the UMP party, Sarkozy, 51, is tough on illegal immigration and pro-American.
* Segolene Royal: Socialist Royal, 53, hopes to become France's first woman president. Critics say she relies more on image than substance.
* Jean-Marie Le Pen: The far-right veteran, 78, stunned France in 2002 by reaching the run off. This is his fifth bid for the presidency.
* Jacques Chirac: The French President,74, has refused to rule out running for an unprecedented third term but this is seen as unlikely given his age and low ratings.
