THE two French presidential candidates headed into the last round of their campaign battles with both of them threatened by the shadow of scandal, a week ahead of the country’s runoff.As he struggled to catch up with his Socialist rival and front runner Francois Hollande, incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy called for tougher borders and a stronger national identity.Sarkozy, who lags his centre-left challenger Hollande by 10 points in opinion polls for the May 6 vote, hammered home a message aimed at the nearly one-in-five far-right voters whose support he needs to win a second term.In a speech in the southern city of Toulouse on Sunday, the conservative Sarkozy used the word “border” dozens of times as he stressed that love of one’s country should not be confused with “dangerous nationalist ideology”.“Without borders there is no nation, there is no Republic, there is no civilisation,” Sarkozy told some 10,000 supporters. “We are not superior to others but we are different,” he said.Hollande took the moral high ground when he addressed some 22,000 Socialist voters at a simultaneous rally in Paris, saying he would not stoop to using such vote-garnering tactics.“I want victory, but not at any price, not at the price of caricature and lies,” he said. “I want to win over the men and women who are angry, a hundred times yes, but compromise myself? A thousand times no.”There was scant mention of the economy from either, despite widespread concern over sickly growth levels that are threatening deficit-cutting targets in Europe’s No. 2 economy.Hollande’s tax-and-spend programme seeks to balance the budget in 2017, a year after Sarkozy, who wants to trim labour costs to boost competitiveness. Analysts say that whoever wins, big austerity cuts will be needed in the months ahead.As the duel between the hot-blooded Sarkozy and the mild-mannered Hollande heated up, the president scorned a report by investigative website Mediapart saying deposed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi sought to fund his 2007 election campaign.
