Socialist Segolene Royal vowed on Sunday to reform France gently if elected its first woman president and dismissed attacks on her credibility as sexist, saying her record was better than that of her main opponents.
As the campaign entered its final week before next Sunday's first round, Royal rammed home her themes of fairness, order and inclusiveness, values she said contrasted with the harsh, divisive policies of right-wing frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy.
"Today there is a confrontation between two programmes, two ways of doing politics, two visions of the country and I want the French people to have that choice in the second round" on May 6, a confident Royal told Radio J.
"France needs to be reformed without violence, without brutality," she said, referring to hard-line comments by former interior minister Sarkozy.
Royal also said the constant doubting of her ability to run the euro zone's second largest economy reflected the sexism that many French women suffered daily in the workplace.
As minister for the environment, schools and the family, she had carried out important reforms while centrist rival Francois Bayrou had abandoned change after drawing a million protesters to the streets when education minister, she said.
She said Sarkozy's tenure as interior minister had meant "always more brutality, more insecurity and the emergence of mass delinquency".
CHARACTER TEST:
Royal's comments appeared designed to transform the election into a straight left-right fight and a referendum on Sarkozy, whose character has come under fire over his comments on crime, immigration and the possible genetic causes of paedophilia.
On Sunday he defended his drive to draw off support from veteran National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who caused a sensation five years ago by making the presidential run-off.
"I don't want Jean-Marie Le Pen in the second round like in 2002," Sarkozy told voters in southern France. "I speak to all the French people, without exception."
The two men traded barbs all last week as they battled for the volatile working class vote pollsters say is key to the election, and Le Pen returned to the attack on Sunday.
"You have not noticed the incredible anger of the French people, pillaged, ruined and despairing of the political scum of which you are one of the leaders and one of the emblems," Le Pen told a Paris rally. The word "scum" was a pointed reference to one of Sarkozy's most notorious outbursts against young thugs.
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