France has a new President!

After an intense political debate France has a new President!
Conservative candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has won the hotly
contested French presidential election.
The final count gave Mr Sarkozy 53.06%, compared with 46.94% for socialist Segolene Royal, with turnout at 85%. Mr Sarkozy, 52, the son of a Hungarian immigrant, takes over from the 74-year-old Jacques Chirac. France's new president is a man best known for his energy and his will to power: a human dynamo, who left his opponents trailing and exhausted in his wakeThe Socialist Segolene Royal worked hard to beat him, but without the real backing of her own party and without a clear manifesto for France, she failed.
The 52-year-old Nicolas Sarkozy scandalised the Paris elite a few years ago when he admitted to constantly thinking about becoming French president, "not only when I am shaving in the morning". Yet he was never part of that elite. He is the son of a Hungarian immigrant, who abandoned the young Sarkozy and his two brothers when they were young. According to several biographers, this left him with a burning desire to prove himself through sheer hard work and merit. Sarkozy is a deeply divisive figure for the FrenchNor did Mr Sarkozy attend the traditional elite school, ENA, but studied instead as a lawyer. He went almost immediately into politics at the age of 22, becoming mayor of the upmarket Paris suburb of Neuilly at just 28 with the aid of the UMP's predecessor, the RPR - the party of President Jacques Chirac, who took the young Nicolas under his wing. Today, Mr Sarkozy's enemies on the left mockingly call him an American neo-con, who just happens to have a French passport, or deride him as a short, power-hungry man with a Napoleon complex. Mr Sarkozy's former campaign manager, Franck Tapiro has known him for 22 years and says the new president's talents will change the face of France."He's a courageous man who has the guts to act and fulfil his promises. He believes that politics can change lives," he enthuses. "He is very dynamic, and for him life is about movement. He's the locomotive and always one step ahead - you just have to follow him." However, Mr Tapiro acknowledges: "You either love him or you hate him. There is nothing in between."