Sarkozy admits he risks losing election

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has admitted in supposedly off-the-record comments that he could lose power in April’s election, saying to aides that a stubborn lead in polls by his Socialist rival means his days could be numbered.

The conservative leader, stuck with dismal ratings as France endures a third year of economic gloom, sounded uncharacteristically defeatist as he said during a weekend trip to French Guyana that the election could spell the end of his political career.

“In any case, I am at the end,” Mr Sarkozy told aides and a pool of accompanying reporters in comments leaked in French media yesterday.

“For the first time in my life I am facing the end of my career.”

Mr Sarkozy, known for his breathless pace of activity and a tendency to micromanage, said that if he lost the two-round election on 22 April and 6 May, he would quit politics and swap public life for a quieter working life with four-day weekends.

“In any case, I would change my life completely, you would no longer hear anything of me,” he said, in remarks published in the dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro.

Mr Sarkozy has been behind Socialist Francois Hollande in the polls for months, and has far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Centrist Francois Bayrou snapping at his heels.

Environment minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, photographed next to a stony-faced Mr Sarkozy during a boat trip in Guyana, yesterday played down the comments, saying the media were giving them an inappropriate political spin.

But one close adviser to Mr Sarkozy said he was simply being honest: “Sarkozy always says what he thinks. He said he hopes to win but he could be beaten; it’s simply the truth.“