PARIS: Fresh from his landslide presidential victory, Jacques Chirac may, paradoxically, prove to be the weakest chief executive in modern times here.

A longtime politician tainted by financial scandals while he was mayor of Paris, Chirac, a conservative, owes his 82-percent win not to an overwhelming mandate, but to a massive rejection of far-right nationalist candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Though France and worried leaders in other European countries are breathing a collective sigh of relief at the defeat of rightist extremism and Le Pen, the election has revealed deep fissures of discontent among the electorate here.

“Chirac was elected not on the basis of a programme, but with a simple mandate - to keep democracy alive,” Socialist Party secretary Francois Hollande says. “The right would be wrong to claim it has the confidence of the country.”

The results of the April 21 first round offered an alarming X-ray of the country’s political mood. Voter apathy, reflected in an abstention rate of almost 30 percent, and an array of fringe candidates on the far left and far right, contributed to the defeat of the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin.

“Abstention and protest votes are a clear manifestation of defiance towards a political system that bogs France down in leadership paralysis,” says Christian Blanc, a former public sector official and former CEO of Merrill Lynch France who recently started a political think tank.

“In the two years to come, the government will have to introduce the deep changes needed to restore confidence in the capacity of democratic institutions and political parties to move the country ahead and respond to citizens’ expectations,” Mr. Blanc adds.

The next battle comes in June, as France elects its next parliament. The socialists hope to capitalize on two weeks of massive street protests against Le Pen, who campaigned on an anti-immigrant, anti-EU platform. To avoid the kind of splintering that was partly to blame for Jospin’s first-round defeat, the socialists are now trying to forge an alliance with the Greens, the Communist Party, and other small left-wing parties

Chirac wants a political majority and hopes to avoid “cohabitation.” This odd feature of French political life has forced power sharing between right and left three times in the last 15 years and is largely blamed for causing the deadlock that has fuelled voter disenchantment toward the political establishment. Polls are projecting a narrow majority for Chirac in parliament. —Dawn/LATS Service (c) Christian Science Monitor.