Vive la République -- for now

Chirac's overwhelming election victory over the Front National in last week's French presidential elections was more a national victory than a personal triumph, writes David Tresilian from Paris
In the wake of massive May Day demonstrations across France last week against Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front's candidate in the second round of the French presidential elections, French voters flocked to the polls last Sunday to deliver French President Jacques Chirac with a resounding victory and a second term in office.
Chirac, who heads the Rassemblement pour la République (RPR) party and has held the country's highest political post since 1995, easily defeated the extreme right-wing candidate, scoring 82.06 per cent of the vote against Le Pen's 17.94 per cent. More than 80 per cent of the electorate turned out to vote, with an 19.26 per cent abstention rate.
The incumbent French president received the highest ever vote for a candidate in French presidential elections, eclipsing the 58.21 per cent won by Georges Pompidou in the 1969 elections or the 55.20 per cent gained by General de Gaulle, founder of the Fifth Republic, in 1965. The result is being read as a vote for the values of the French Republic and against the extreme right rather than as a genuine opting for Chirac and the parliamentary right he represents.
The result stands in stark contrast to the 19.88 per cent of the vote that Chirac polled in the first round of the presidential elections on 21 April. Then, Socialist Party candidate and French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was knocked out with 16.18 per cent of the vote, behind the 16.86 per cent that Le Pen amassed.
Celebrations erupted in Paris when the official projections were announced at 8pm last Sunday night, as crowds in the French capital braved the grim weather to join the celebratory party that was organised at the Place de la République. Chirac said in his victory speech that France had "lived through a period of profound anxiety" since the surprise results of the first round of the elections. "This evening," Chirac continued, "France has reaffirmed its attachment to the values of the republic with striking force."
"I have heard and understood your call that the Republic should continue to live," he said, in a formulation that echoed General De Gaulle's Je vous ai compris (I have understood you), an expression that was said by the general to the crowds on several occasions during his career. "It is through strong and determined action and thanks to the results obtained that we can struggle together against intolerance," Chirac said.
In his post-election address, delivered to disappointed supporters at the National Front headquarters in Saint-Cloud outside Paris, Le Pen said that the result represented "the defeat of French hopes," and added that Chirac's victory was obtained by "Soviet methods, using every kind of social, political and economic force."
Returning to a theme that he had often broached during the campaign, Le Pen said that he was the victim of a political and media establishment "in the service of the campaign of a great, honest man that not so long ago everyone was calling 'Super-Liar.'" The result, he said, came about through a "hysterical campaign, orchestrated by the powers that be, all united in defending their privileges."
Despite the scale of Chirac's striking victory, commentators have lost little time in pointing out that the result was actually a highly ambiguous one and that it will do little to help France out of the sense of political impasse and frustration that many be interpreted as being responsible for 21 April's surprise result.
In the first round of the elections, Chirac scored the lowest ever percentage polled by an incumbent French president. Furthermore, the election was marked by an abstention rate of nearly 30 per cent. Fewer than 20 per cent of French voters voted for Chirac's policies in the first round which argued for harsher measures in dealing with France's alarming crime rate, further economic liberalisation and the introduction of reforms by which to restore competitiveness to France's ailing industry, currently burdened by social charges and over- regulation.
Chirac's proposal to reform the police and set up a special Ministry of Internal Security to deal with young offenders had provoked Le Pen to quip that he was "the original and Chirac the photocopy."
The real test, French commentators say, will come with the legislative elections, the first round of which is slated for 9 June. When the results are made known at the end of the second round on 16 June, the composition of the new French parliament, the l'Assemblée nationale, will be made clearer.
Should Chirac's RPR, together with the various right-wing parliamentary parties that are expected to form a coalition with it, not gain a majority on 16 June, there will be a return to the status quo ante whereby a right-wing president is obliged to "cohabit" with a left-wing government. This arrangement stymied political initiative in the past and gave the French president only a figurehead role.
Important issues such as the future of France's pensions system, the future of social security, the heavy social charges that hamper job-creation and the high rates of income tax were left unresolved during Chirac's last presidency, condemning him to being the least respected of all French presidents in the Fifth Republic.
The socialist government's flagship policies, introduced under Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from 1997 onwards, included a state-sponsored youth-employment scheme and a reduction of the working week to 35 hours, two measures that were introduced in a bid to create jobs and combat high rates of frustration, particularly among young people. These were bitterly opposed by the French Right, which saw them as destroying the competitiveness of French industry.
Chirac's personal record also came under scrutiny, with a series of corruption scandals that implicated highly-placed figures in the RPR and caused an investigating magistrate to issue a writ against Chirac in connection with allegations of corrupt practices at the Paris City Council when he was mayor in the 1980s.
Chirac refused to testify, citing presidential immunity, in a move that fed Le Pen's claims that the French political establishment is corrupt.
In his victory speech, Chirac lost little time in setting out his programme for his second term: reform of the justice system, increased support for law and order, the lowering of income taxes and social security charges and vague promises to launch "social negotiations" on employment law and regulation.
All of this, however, has little chance of coming about should a new period of Left-Right cohabitation start on 16 June.
Already French commentators are discussing the formation of a Sixth Republic to replace the Fifth, possibly on the model of either the American presidential system or the British parliamentary one, both of which concentrate legislative power and avoid the fragmentation that has been a feature of French political life in recent years.
If France can not escape the impasse that led to the FN's victory over the socialists on 21 April -- despite this being reversed on 5 May -- then, one commentator on French television last week warned, the old saying about France "being unable to reform herself except through revolution" may once again come to pass.
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