French voters delivered the Left a massive defeat at last week's parliamentary elections and opened the door to five years of right-wing government, writes David Tresilian from Paris French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's centre-right government emerged from the first round of France's parliamentary elections last Sunday victorious. Right-wing parties won 44 per cent of the vote against 36 per cent for the Left in an election marked by a 35 per cent abstention rate, the highest ever recorded. The ruling RPR (Rassemblement pour la République) Party and its UMP (Union pour la majorité présidentielle -- Union for a presidential majority) coalition partners are now expected to go on comfortably to win the election's second round next Sunday, chalking up, according to preliminary projections, up to 446 of the 577 seats in the Assemblée Nationale, the French parliament. Only a month after French President Jacques Chirac was re-elected to a further five years in office with 82.21 per cent of the vote -- a result interpreted as a protest against the extreme- right Front National (FN) party's unprecedented success in the first round of the presidential elections -- voter apathy seems to have returned to French politics. Both left and right-wing parties have mounted unimaginative campaigns and the media has been dominated by the fortunes of France's World Cup football team. More than 8,000 candidates stood for election, some constituencies being swamped by as many as 16 hopefuls. Most of these will now be knocked out, having failed to gain the number of votes that allow them to go through to the second round. Under the complicated rules that govern French parliamentary elections, the two leading candidates, together with any others who managed to score more than 12.5 per cent of the vote, go through to the second round. Thereafter, a simple majority is enough for one of them to be elected. As a result, candidates representing extreme or marginal parties were knocked out during the first round of the elections. Nevertheless, the French Communist Party (PCF) garnered five per cent of the vote on the first round and is expected to preserve a small presence in parliament after next week's vote. The PCF, which has 35 seats in the current parliament and was a coalition partner in Lionel Jospin's "plural left" government, is expected to be reduced to between eight and 17, fewer than the 20 seats minimum required to constitute a parliamentary grouping. The Front National, whose surprise victory over outgoing French prime minister and Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin at the first round of the presidential election on 21 April led to an earthquake in French politics and Jospin's retirement after five years in power, suffered a defeat in the parliamentary elections, scoring a mere 12.55 per cent of the vote. This contrasts with the 16.86 per cent that Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen achieved during the first round of the presidential elections. The FN is unlikely to gain more than two seats in parliament during next week's second round of voting. Projections show that it will only be able to field candidates in some 30 constituencies, compared with 76 in the last parliamentary elections in 1997. The Front National currently has no seats in parliament. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a little-known figure prior to his appointment by President Chirac on 6 May, declared that, if elected at next Sunday's second round of voting, his government would follow "the engagements announced by the president of the Republic during the presidential election campaign". This translates into putting an emphasis on "three major objectives: affirming the republican authority; relaunching social dialogue; and freeing the creative forces" in French society. In the five-week run-up to the parliamentary elections, Raffarin's government has moved to increase police powers and funding in a strategy aimed at fighting France's soaring crime rates. Minister of the Interior Nicholas Sarkozy, who is widely tipped to become prime minister before Raffarin's appointment, was particularly instrumental in pushing through this legislation. Concerns over crime and immigration were put forward in explaining the Front National's surprise success in the first round of the presidential elections. Now they are setting the agenda for the parliamentary election. Sarkozy announced on 29 May that six billion Euros would be made available to reinforce the police and justice system over the next five years. Meanwhile, Minister of Justice Dominique Perben announced that the government intends to re-establish Borstals for young offenders. The last of these was closed in 1979 following allegations that violent practices occurred within them. Comment in the French press has concentrated on the low election turn-out, the extreme left and right-wing parties' poor showing and the clear majority that the centre-right government looks set to accomplish. Should the government preside over a landslide, it will end five years of "cohabitation" during which a centre-right president was obliged to co-operate with a left-wing government. President Chirac and Prime Minister Jean- Pierre Raffarin made ending this arrangement a major feature of the UMP's campaign, arguing that five years of cohabitation had paralysed the country. "Faced with the problems that France is now confronting, action must be taken and this is only possible with a real majority. There is no alternative.... to an active government supported by a parliament that will allow it to act," Chirac told television reporters on 5 June. Raffarin, on an election tour to Marseilles on 6 June, similarly called for the French people to elect a clear majority in the upcoming poll, saying that this would allow the government to end "five years of Socialist stagnation." "The Socialists in power means four million living in poverty and 60,000 young people without qualifications," he said, adding that "the situation we find ourselves in is catastrophic", and promising "not words, speeches or promises, but results". Since being knocked out at the first round of the presidential elections, former Socialist Party Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has retired from public life, and taken no part in his party's election campaign. Now led by the former ruling party's General Secretary, François Hollande, doomed Socialist MPs have been scrambling to salvage whatever they can from their Party's collapse. Meanwhile, senior figures insist that their party will still perform creditably at next week's second round, despite projections to the opposite. Reacting to the Socialists' defeat, Hollande called on "all those who did not vote on Sunday to do so on 16 June" at the second round, adding that the concentration of "all powers in the hands of the right" would be a danger for France.
