French centre needs support from extremes

Will the respectable politicians of the French centre-right, despairing as the last vestiges of power slip from them, succumb to the evil allure of the extreme right-wing National Front (FN) - the racist party that wants to expel non-European immigrants from France? That, in a nutshell is the question which has dominated the campaign for tomorrow's French regional poll.

The election of 1,880 regional councillors has been called the third round of last summer's parliamentary ballot, when the centre-right lost half its seats in the National Assembly. The right's virtuous rejection of overtures from Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen's FN cost it an additional 40 seats in the 1997 poll. In 1995, the refusal to fraternise with the Front cost the centre-right 30 big towns in municipal elections.

Tomorrow's poll is but a stepping stone to the 2002 presidential election, and the performance of the FN - and the centre-right's attitude towards it - are of crucial importance. This risks being obscured by the expected victory of the ruling "pink, red and green" (Socialist-Communist-Ecologist) coalition. The disarray of the centre-right alliance of the Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR) and Union for French Democracy (UDF) will again be painfully evident; the centre-right has ruled 20 of the 22 mainland regions since the 1992 regional elections. This time, the left could take up to 15 regions.

The councillors elected on Sunday will proceed to elect regional presidents on the 20th of March. That is where Mr Le Pen's FN comes in: because it is unlikely that any party will win an absolute majority in any given region, with its expected 15 per cent or so of regional councillors, the FN will be in a position to swing the vote for regional leaders.

The left has exploited ambiguous statements by a handful of centre-right politicians, accusing them of planning a pact with the devil. There is a precedent: in 1986, two UDF politicians, Mr Jean-Claude Gaudin in Provence and Mr Jacques Blanc in Languedoc-Roussillon, concluded electoral accords with the FN to hold on to their regions. But for the most part, the centre-right has paid dearly for shunning the advances of Mr Le Pen and his deputy, Mr Bruno Megret.

Mr Megret, who will eventually replace the 70-year-old Mr Le Pen as FN leader, gambles that sooner or later the centre-right will tire of losing elections and openly embrace his party. The centre-right is divided between those who feel that once the obstreperous, openly racist Mr Le Pen is out of the way they can do business with the FN, and those like President Chirac who feel a visceral revulsion for the party.

Mr Philippe Seguin, the leader of Mr Chirac's RPR, warns repeatedly than any deal with the FN "would lead to a moral, political and electoral impasse". The three prominent centre-right leaders of the biggest regions - the former prime minister, Mr Edouard Balladur, in the Paris Ile-de-France region, Mr Francois Leotard in Provence-AlpesCote d'Azur and Mr Charles Millon in Rhone-Alpes have all promised not to stand for the regional presidency if the left scores higher in their constituencies tomorrow.

The left may even win Ile-de-France, which has been controlled by the centre-right for the past 26 years. The former RPR Interior Minister, Mr Charles Pasqua, has warned that the capital region will become "a sort of Bronx" if the left takes over.

Continuing the strategy that brought them to power last year, the Socialists have promoted young candidates, many of them female.

The Socialists are the main beneficiaries of the fragmentation of the right and the Socialist leader, Mr Francois Hollande advocates "republican discipline" whereby centre-right and left-wing candidates will desist in favour of the leading candidate to deprive the FN of the role of arbiter.

But in the five days between tomorrow's poll and the election of regional presidents by the new councillors, this "discipline" could break down. Where the centre-right and left score are extremely close, so the temptation will be to stay in the race. A few deals with the FN - either open or under the table - are expected. Mr Seguin threatened to expel one RPR regional president, Mr Jean-Francois Mancel, after he said that "if certain representatives of the National Front are prepared to support the policies [of the right] there is no reason for us to refuse their assistance."

The French law on regional elections desperately needs reforming. Because the election lists are drawn up on the basis of 95 departments - instead of the 22 mainland regions whose councils are elected - the regions have not emerged as distinct political entities. The system of proportional representation creates hamstrung, unstable councils which are forced to make concessions to the extreme right and left, as well as tiny ecologist parties.