PARIS: The final round of the presidential election on Sunday is becoming in effect a referendum on the racist views of Jean Marie Le Pen.

“The election won’t be a normal one,” says Marie George Buffet, general secretary of the Communist Party. “We French face an existential choice between democracy and dictatorship, between the continuation of France as a free society and the end of all liberties.”

She says “all French citizens that love freedom and democracy should vote against Le Pen, that is, for Chirac.” For a Communist leader to support Chirac “is painful but we don’t have a choice,” she says.

Le Pen has called at various times for expulsion of immigrants and if not, for more rights for native French people. He has a record of torturing prisoners in the Algerian war. He also wants to take France out of the European Union.

Just as Le Pen stands for a set of ideas, Chirac too has come to be less a candidate in his own right than an idea that stands in opposition to Le Pen’s. Chirac is otherwise seen widely as a demagogue and as a corrupt politician.

Uncertainties about the outcome have led to renewed calls to back Chirac. After getting it wrong for the first round, many agencies have refused to publish opinion polls on the results.

There are fears also that Chirac’s promises of tough policies against crime might actually help Le Pen. “To fight crime is not in the political culture of the Left,” Chirac has been saying in his campaign. In his last term as President, the government was led by Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin.

Experts say that fear of crime orchestrated during Chirac’s campaign cut into Jospin’s votes but also boosted the vote for the neo-fascist Le Pen. They fear this could help Le Pen again.

Chirac’s own murky past could also come in the way of a vote for him Sunday. Prosecutors have tried unsuccessfully to charge Chirac with misappropriation of several hundred million dollars of public funds, but

Chirac has claimed presidential immunity under the French constitution. According to opinion polls earlier, only 11 per cent of citizens see Chirac as honest.

Chirac got less than 20 per cent of the vote in the first round. That meant four million votes less than the votes he got in the first round of presidential elections in 1995.

Some left supporters have announced they will go to the polling booth with clothes pegs fastened on their noses to show they have a stinking choice. Others have said they would wear hand gloves to avoid touching “infected ballots”. Voters are being warned against such expressions. Leftist parties are asking members to vote for Chirac now.

—Dawn/InterPress Service.