Who is Valerie Pecresse, the woman who could become France's first woman president?

Fifteen years ago, Valerie Pecresse quelled a student uprising over her university reforms with the same blend of consensus-building politics and reformist mettle that she believes will now propel her to the French presidency.

Chosen to run last month by rank-and-file members of the conservative Les Republicains party, voter surveys show Pecresse could beat President Emmanuel Macron in April's election. If she succeeds, she would become France's first woman head of state.

In an office adorned with framed cinema posters, Pecresse, 54, reeled off a list of woes facing France that speak of her social and fiscal conservatism: poor control of national borders, violent city ghettos and a growing pile of debt.

"We need to restore order, both on our streets and in our national accounts," she told Reuters.

A minister for higher education and then the budget during Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency, Pecresse said last week she would bring out "the power hose" to clean up trouble neighbourhoods where the state had lost authority and lawlessness prevailed.

Critical of Macron for "burning a hole in the state coffers" during the pandemic, Pecresse has promised to reform France's generous pension system and cut a bloated public wage bill - both pledges she says Macron has failed to deliver on.

Her style, she says, is "two-thirds (Angela) Merkel and one-third (Margaret) Thatcher".

"I am a woman who consults, decides and acts," she said. "The one-part Thatcher is to say 'I'm not for turning'," referring to a phrase in a 1980 speech when the conservative British leader refused to back down on liberalising reforms.

Pecresse pointed to the cutting of hundreds of jobs at her head office to make way for more high-school staff, reduced spending and higher investment as proof she gets things done. In 2020, she won a second mandate to run the greater Paris region.

Opponents who had nicknamed her "the blond" had paid the price, she said. Asked if France was ready for a woman president, she replied: "Voters on the right have shown they're ready, and they can be the most reticent to trust a woman."

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