May 1, 2002	Wednesday	Safar 17, 1423

PARIS, April 30: A French ad agency has decided to add a bit of humour — as much as it can, in any case — to this week’s rather glum and lacklustre campaign for the second, and final, round of French presidential elections on May 5.

President Jacques Chirac faces extremist rightwing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in a vote that could very well determine the future of France as a fountain-head of democratic and republican values.

The agency, BDDP & Fils, has been hired by Cidem, a public affairs organization devoted to the promotion of democratic values, to undertake a public affairs campaign aimed at encouraging the French to make the effort to go and vote in the all-important presidential elections next Sunday.

A record 28 per cent abstention rate during the first round vote on April 21 resulted in the surprise second-place finish of rightwing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Polls published last weekend show that 70 per cent of abstentionists said they “regretted” not having voted on April 21, as otherwise their vote would have most likely gone to losing Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin.

Most abstentionists said they chose not to vote because they fully believed that Jospin and President Chirac would, without a doubt, be chosen among 16 candidates to be the two finalists.

All of France’s principal polling organizations had forecast that Chirac and Jospin would be the probable winners of the first-round vote.

The BDDP & Fils campaign is to center on a TV spot, a public service announcement, that is to be carried notably by France Television, the country’s public TV network, but also private channel M6, owned by German group, and will tell French voters that if they do not go to vote, then they have no right to complain about the results of the second and final round.