PARIS: French President Nicolas Sarkozy is facing up to the possibility that he could lose power in April's election, admitting 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 remarked 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," Sarkozy told aides and a pool of accompanying reporters in off-record comments leaked in French media on Tuesday. "For the first time in my life I am facing the end of my career."
Sarkozy, known for his breathless pace of activity and a tendency to micromanage, said that if he lost the two-round election on April 22 and May 6 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.
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. Hollande could beat him by 10 percentage points in a runoff, surveys show.
Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, photographed next to a stony faced Sarkozy during a shallow boat trip in Guyana, played down the comments as a "non-event" and said the media were giving them an inappropriate political spin.
A longtime adviser to Sarkozy told Reuters 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. It's a big discovery, yes, but he's not daft," he said.
"Imagine if he had told them there is no chance he could be beaten - the headline would have been 'This guy is crazy'."
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