PARIS, June 10: Based on results of yesterday’s first-round French legislative elections, it looks President Jacques Chirac will get solid majority when final votes are counted next Sunday.

Indeed, seven of his 17 ministers, who were running for office, were surprisingly elected during the first-round vote where it has become practically impossible to win 50 per cent of the vote when a candidate, albeit popular, is up against 15 - 25 other candidates. One precinct in Paris had 29 candidates running during the first-round poll.

In yesterday’s vote, which saw a record abstention rate of 35 per cent, Mr Chirac’s candidates, most of them fielded by the UMP - Union pour la majorite presidentielle - won 43.5 per cent of the vote, and left-wing candidates, most of them Socialists, won 35.8 per cent. Extremist candidates of the right won slightly more than 12 per cent, and extremist left-wing candidates, most of them Trotskists, won slightly less than 3 per cent.

Projections based on yesterday’s results would indicate that Mr Chirac will have between 382 and 427 seats in the new 577-seat legislature that will sit for the next five years.

The remainder will be held by the French left, and notably by the Socialist Party which, in spite of the defection of its leader Lionel Jospin, who chose to resign from politics following his defeat in the first-round presidential runoff April 21, will dominate the parliamentary opposition with most of the 150 to 191 seats expected to be won by left-wing candidates.

As for extremist candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, who had promised “more surprises” when results would be announced last night, he saw his party lose 30 per cent of the votes that had been cast during presidential elections on April 21 and May 5 as National Front candidates won only about 11 per cent of the first-round vote.

Projections would indicate that his party, if it wins any seats at all during next week’s second-round vote, could have at the most two representatives in the new legislature.