World News 27-11-2003 who: French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy what: Calls for "decrepit" President Jacques Chirac to stand down where: Paris when: Yesterday snippet: M Sarkozy, President Chirac`s main rival, is voicing a growing sense among voters "that he is washed up, too comfortable in his trappings and disinterested[sic] in domestic problems," reports The Telegraph. M Chirac would like to stand for re-election to a third presidential term in 2007 when he will be 74. "But the French dread M Chirac becoming like Franois Mitterrand in his later years - a tired, sick geriatric clinging to power for its own sake. He has already slowed government to a crawl, convinced that France can only handle one major reform a year, and the frustration among the younger generation only needed someone to articulate it." [... more]

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