GREEN FRENCH TV STAR SAYS WON’T RUN FOR PRESIDENT
01.26.07 - Leído 138 veces. Enviar esta notaTelevision star Nicolas Hulot announced on Monday he would not run for the French presidency, lifting the prospect of a candidacy that could have stripped votes from the main contenders
PARIS, France; January 2, 2007.- Hulot, 51, became a household name in the late 1980s and early 1990s for presenting a popular television programme which showcased some of the world’s most remote and stunning landscapes.
He threatened last November to run for president in the 2007 election if leading candidates did not sign up to an ecological pact to make the environment a top priority.
In the event, most of them did, albeit with reservations, convincing Hulot not to throw his hat into the ring.
“I have chosen to trust the candidates’ words and their commitment,” he told a news conference.
Opinion polls predicted he would have taken around 10 percent of votes, winning support from all sides but hurting Socialist candidate Segolene Royal slightly more than conservative Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
An IPSOS survey this month said he would have grabbed 4 percentage points from Royal against 3 from Sarkozy.
Hulot also came third in a recent survey listing France’s most popular personalities, after soccer legend Zinedine Zidane and tennis champion-turned pop star Yannick Noah.
Frontrunners Royal and Sarkozy have signed Hulot’s ecological pact but have not fully endorsed all his proposals, such as imposing a carbon tax on polluters and appointing a deputy prime minister in charge of sustainable development.
Hulot anguished over his decision for weeks and told reporters on Monday he feared that after he had ruled himself out, the candidates would forget their pledges.
To counter that, he said he would remain active ahead of the April and May election, putting pressure on the frontrunners to keep the environment at the heart of the debate.
“I ask them and beg them to show us as of tomorrow that words and signatures finally have a meaning and a value that time can in no case render obsolete,” Hulot said.
Hulot has stolen the ecological limelight from France’s main environmentalist party, the Greens, which is riddled with internal divisions and is struggling to put together a coherent election campaign under the leadership of Dominique Voynet.
She is stuck at around the 2 percent mark and surveys say Voynet will not get any major boost from Hulot’s decision.
Hulot also ruled out throwing his weight behind the Greens.
“I will support no one in this presidential campaign,” he said.
(Reuters)
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