French weekly magazines review

The story of the week is today’s citizens’ vote to pick the Socialist party’s presidential candidate.

Le Nouvel Observateur narrates how the idea of the primaries came about and how it has transformed the face of French politics, packing town hall meetings and beating television records during the three weeks of graceful campaigning and television debates involving the six contenders.

According to the left-leaning weekly, the primaries unveiled a team of bright and reform-minded politicians, whose ideas are set to spice up the 2012 presidential debate. The ruling Centre-right coalition, it says, must admit that the mechanism has reunited citizens with politics.

L’Express agrees that the primaries are a beautiful invention, but it warns that the winner will be celebrating from the bottom of the hill. He or she will have to tell the truth about the hard choices ahead.

They will have to shelve Carl Marx, study Churchill, trim down the social benefits of many, up taxes for everyone, and become a reasonable and responsible government party.

L’Express believes François Hollande will be the man of the hour. The presidential bid of the former Socialist party chief is this week’s cover story. The magazine examines how the reportedly “ambitious” Hollande is working hard on his bid and building his campaign team.

L'Express also spoke to Socialist party leader Martine Aubry, who explains why she and not Hollande should get the nomination, and why she stands a better chance to lead the left to victory in 2012.

L’Express presses ahead with allegations of police espionage against François Hollande’s partner, which are causing further embarrassment to the government. The right-wing weekly quoted what it called “irrefutable police sources,” saying that a state intelligence agency had probed the private life of Hollande’s partner Valérie Trierweiler.

The accused have denied the allegations, but L’Express says they have the trappings of a scandal in the making. It broke out as France’s intelligence chief faces investigation for spying on two journalists who unveiled the Bettencourt graft and illegal campaign funding scam.

L’Express underlines that it was Nicolas Sarkozy who sponsored the law passed in 2002 banishing police profiling in France.

“Unbelievable but true,” screams Marianne, as it revealed that the mobile phone operator SFR admitted to consulting over 400,000 cellular phone files every year, some 10,000 on the orders of the administration.

A new tracking poll for Le Nouvel Observateur found out that President Sarkozy is no longer the Centre-Right’s preferred candidate for the 2012 election.

The BVA survey puts foreign minister Alain Juppé two points ahead of Sarkozy. The incumbent, however, continues to be the favorite candidate for white collar voters by 59 percent to 36 for Juppé, according to two other polls carried out by IFOP and Viavoice early this week.

Sarkozy’s disturbing poll trends are compounded by new statistics showing that 77 percent of Centrists and National Front voters favor the fielding of an alternative conservative candidate for 2012.

The Centrists have been in the wilderness since the Radical Party leader Jean Louis Borloo dropped out of the presidential race. Le Nouvel Observateur believes he was discouraged by bad opinion polls and his own inability to federate the splinter groups that make up the Centrist bloc in parliament.

Le Canard Enchaîné regrets that Borloo didn’t feel obliged to inform several politicians who had jumped ship to join his presidential bid.

The satirical weekly publishes a cartoon of Borloo telling stunned aides that he reached the decision while driving to TFI, the private television channel on which he announced his withdrawal. Le Canard ridicules his claims that he didn’t want to add confusion to confusion.

Le Canard Enchaîné says it is astonishing that the “quite confused” man is being hailed by top ruling party dignitaries as a courageous statesman.

Le Point and Le Figaro Magazine both welcome Steven Spielberg’s new film Tintin, the legendary hero of late Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, or "Hergé." The animated picture is due out on 26 October and critics who have seen it say it’s the film of the year.

Spielberg told Le Figaro that he negotiated the deal to shoot Tintin in 1983, as the adventures of Hergé’s little investigative journalist thrilled millions of young cartoon lovers around the world.

The grand première in October will coincide with the 28th anniversary of the death of Hergé, described by Le Point as perhaps the most prolific screenwriters of the 20th century.