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PARIS, May 4: After two weeks of political mayhem, French voters across the political spectrum were urged on Saturday to rally behind Jacques Chirac in Sunday’s presidential vote and deny far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen victory.
With the mud-slinging campaign officially over and the noisy street rallies a distant echo, voters had a final day to reflect on an election that has become a referendum on the extreme right after Le Pen’s shock success last month.
Le Pen, a 73-year-old former political street brawler who once called the Holocaust a “detail” of history, stunned Europe on April 21 when he edged Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into third place in the first round with 17 percent of the vote.
In an example of the unity that has emerged in the wake of Le Pen’s triumph, France’s leading newspapers on Saturday urged readers to vote for the sleaze-tarnished Chirac in order to block the xenophobic far-right leader.
The left-wing daily Liberation printed the word “Yes” in big block letters on its cover over a drawing of a ballot being cast for Chirac — evoking the huge front-page “No” it ran the morning after Le Pen knocked Jospin out of the race.
With Chirac the expected victor by default in Sunday’s runoff — thanks to a rare show of unity that has both the Catholic church and homosexuals joining to block Le Pen — everyone is looking ahead to parliamentary elections next month for the real contest.
Those elections, held over two rounds on June 9 and 16, will determine the colour of the next government and whether Chirac again has to share power with the left after five years of paralysing “cohabitation” with Jospin.
Commentators say Sunday’s vote could influence Chirac’s choice of an interim prime minister to serve between May and June — a sign of what could come if his conservatives were to win a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly.
The main favourites for the job are provincial moderate Jean-Pierre Raffarin and the ambitious Gaullist Nicolas Sarkozy.
“A high Le Pen score would push Chirac to the right, putting Sarkozy in the prime minister’s office,” Liberation wrote on Saturday, saying a weak showing by Le Pen would likely keep Chirac closer to the political centre.
TURNOUT SEEN AS KEY: The main question in the runoff vote now seems to be the size of Chirac’s victory. Severely criticised for not predicting Le Pen’s surge, most pollsters have been wary about putting a figure to Chirac’s score but some see it as high as 80 percent.
With polls hinting that Le Pen has failed to generate momentum during the final week of the campaign, the turnout will be key to determining his share of the vote.
A record 28 percent of France’s 41.2 million voters stayed away from the polls in the first round and one third of voters opted for candidates on the political extremes in a measure of the breadth of disillusion with the mainstream.
Polls suggest interest in Sunday’s runoff surged with Le Pen’s shock qualification, and that abstentions would be far lower — a showing that would almost certainly boost Chirac.
Many voters on the left prepared to swallow their pride and vote for Chirac but some still admitted they were torn.
“I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll vote Chirac or cast a blank ballot. I just don’t know if I can bring myself to do it,” said 26-year-old chef Nicolas Lefebvre.
“Thank goodness we’ve got the legislatives where we can express a real choice. If not I’d be really fed up.”
Some on the left have suggested voters wear gloves, face masks or clothes pegs on their noses while voting for Chirac in protest at the “odour of corruption” they say surrounds him.
But France’s electoral watchdog has warned voters not to break rules that ban partisan displays during voting, saying they could be fined or jailed and have their ballots annulled.
ELECTION’S IMPACT SEEN REMAINING: Even if Chirac prevails at the polls, the reverberations caused by Le Pen’s big score on April 21 will likely be felt for months or even years to come and may possibly set the stage for a complete overhaul of the French political system.
Le Pen capitalised on fears over crime, immigration, and a loss of French identity in an integrated Europe and globalised world, tapping a vein of resentment among voters fed up with what they see as an unresponsive governing elite.
Experts feel a backlash from emboldened foes of globalisation could seriously curb a new government’s appetite for pursuing the economic reforms that many view as crucial to France’s future.
European Union insiders expect a more pugnacious, nationalistic French attitude in Europe regardless of who wins on Sunday and in next month’s parliamentary vote.
Chirac on Friday acknowledged the depth of public discontent that catapulted the extreme-right leader into Sunday’s runoff for the presidency, but questioned the point of reforming France’s political system if he wins.
In its Saturday edition, however, the daily Le Monde devoted eight pages to examining whether France should replace the crisis-torn Fifth Republic, now in its 44th year, to avoid the future risk of messy cohabitation between left and right.
“Repeated cohabitation governments, which have accounted for nine of the last 16 years, have deepened the trouble,” it wrote.—Reuters
