Paris: If French President Nicolas Sarkozy thought that marrying his glamorous girlfriend, singer Carla Bruni, would restore his standing with the French, a poll made public on Tuesday suggests that he was wrong. In the poll, carried out by IFOP and published on the website of the weekly Journal du Dimanche, 31 percent of respondents said that Sarkozy's image "was damaged" because of his marriage to Bruni.

Only four percent said that his image improved, while two of three said that the marriage had no effect on his image. According to Yves-Marie Cann, head of IFOP s Opinion Department, the poll revealed that "the exhibition of the head of state s private life seems clearly to be one of the factors explaining the distrust of him registered recently in several opinion polls." On Tuesday, IFOP also published another survey showing that Sarkozy s decline in popularity is continuing.

According to the survey, which will be published in the weekly Paris Match on Wednesday, 53 percent of the French people disapprove of his policies, a drop of 7 percent over January. However, the approval rating of Sarkozy s prime minister, Francois Fillon, rose by 5 percent in the poll, indicating that the French rejection of Sarkozy is personal, rather than political.

Source : IANS