FRANCE: Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme right-wing National Front (FN) suffered a setback in the first round of legislative elections yesterday. But one week before the second round, President Jacques Chirac's Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP) looks assured of winning an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
Exit polls credited the FN and the breakaway MNR of Mr Bruno Mégret with about 12 per cent of the vote, a substantial decline compared to the 18 per cent won by Mr Le Pen in the second round of the presidential election on May 5th and three percentage points less than the FN's first round score five years ago. The FN is expected to be on the run-off ballot in at most 35 constituencies, nearly 100 less than in 1997.
Mr Le Pen accused the mainstream parties of conniving to destroy the extreme right. "What is the meaning of democracy when millions of French people are not represented?" he asked. According to last night's results, the FN will win between zero and four seats out of 577 in the National Assembly. The anti-Europe, anti-immigrant party obtained 35 seats when France switched to a system based on proportional representation between 1986 and 1988.
Mr Carl Lang, the secretary general of the FN, emphasised that the party created by Mr Le Pen remains "the third party in France, far ahead of the greens, the (centre-right) UDF and the communists".
The Prime Minister, Mr Jean-Pierre Raffarin, deplored the record abstention rate of about 38 per cent. With an estimated 44.3 per cent of the total in the first round, the centre-right should win between 387 and 433 seats - a huge margin over the 289 seats required for an absolute majority.
Mr Raffarin stressed that nothing was certain until the second round on June 16th. He interpreted the excellent results for the centre right as "an appeal for action" by French voters who, he said, were "weary of politics".
The three main objectives of his government will be "affirming republican authority; relaunching the social dialogue; and freeing the \ vital forces", he said. Mr Raffarin promised to fulfil all of President Chirac's campaign commitments.
The socialists, communists and greens won a combined vote estimated at 36.8 per cent in the first round, which should give the former "plural left" between 141 and 192 seats in the next assembly. In the 1997 election, the same parties won 280 seats. Neither the communists nor the greens are expected to obtain the 20 seats required to form a parliamentary group.
The UMP campaigned on one issue, saying the French had to give Mr Chirac a clear majority so that he could carry out his promises. "They will no longer have the excuse of 'cohabitation'," Mr Le Pen grumbled.
"If there are only 150 left-wing deputies and 400 on the right, there's a huge risk of imbalance," the former socialist finance minister Mr Laurent Fabius said. "Social policy will regress; there will be no safeguards and all power will be concentrated in the hands of the right."
The left's only hope was that abstentionists would rally to it for the second round. "Voting takes only five minutes," Mr Fabius said, "and we'll be stuck with this assembly for five years." Asked whether the UMP would agree to debate with other parties over the next week, Mr Patrick Devedjian, a cabinet minister in the Raffarin government said, "The French are fed up with quarrels between left and right. Let us stop arguments that interest only afficionados and address the real aspirations of the French."
Former socialist cabinet minister Mrs Martin Aubry accused Mr Devedjian of "demagogy".