French president Francois Hollande is attempting to capture votes for his Socialist party in a last ditch effort before regional elections in December.
He has been reaching out to voters in groups outside the usual catchment area for the Socialists, including hunters, farmers, and the police.
But Hollande is rated the most unpopular president in French polling history. The opinion polls also suggest that the party is expected to lose the election; they are trailing in third place with the conservatives and the far right polling ahead.
"I've always lived with cows in the fields," Hollande told the popular hunting magazine Le Chasseur Francais (The French Hunter), while reminiscing about his childhood in rural Normandy.
"When I was a child I used to go every morning to pick up milk at the farm next door," he said in the interview. An estimated million hunters are in France, of which 25% subscribe to the magazine.
Hollande praised the “enthusiasm” of hunters and went on to note the problems which wild boars create before promising an annual review of the number of wolves which can be shot.
He has also visited police near Paris to congratulate then on a seven-tonne drug bust, holding a press conference to display the contraband. The effort came just four days after thousands of police engaged in a public protest over the lack of resources.
Underprivileged suburbs around Paris are next on his list, with a visit scheduled for Tuesday.
Hollande’s election should take his office to 2017, but some observers believe he will not be able to govern for the full term.
Comments
But this so often fails. Royalty may well have started off as bandits and thugs hundred's of years ago but over time they metamorphose as solidly useful. Partly because their hangers on and staff expect them to 'behave'.
Republican Presidents have only ever come up through politics. Even in figure head posts as in Portugal they often dabble in wheeling and dealing. There was a period in Cavaco Silva's first term when apparently his security team (why a President needs his own is beyond me) was feuding with Socrates official security apparatus. Each was spying on the other?
And Hollande is in a politically active French Presidency. So no more secret scooter trips off for assignations with the next lover - expect more "Look at me I'm tough bombings of Syria / Iraq /country x or y in Africa"
And the current crop now jockeying to be the next President of Portugal are an unedifying lot. Most, when politically active, have only held Portugal back. And are being pushed forward to do so again. Not an ideal way to chose a President.