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By Emma Charlton
Rivals for the French presidency
made their final appeals to millions of undecided voters Friday
(Friday night and early Saturday in Manila) the official campaign
drew to an end ahead of an election seen as too close to call.
Right-wing contender Nicolas
Sarkozy was leading in opinion polls ahead of Socialist Segolene
Royal, aiming to become France’s first woman president, but both
sides feared a surprise in Sunday’s voting from centrist Francois
Bayrou.
The 12 candidates had until
midnight Friday (2200 GMT) to make their pitch to voters and the top
contenders criss-crossed the country for the final hours of
lobbying, with one in three voters still undecided.
The final wave of polls before
the close of campaigning at midnight Friday showed Sarkozy winning
27 percent to 30 percent of first round votes, ahead of Royal on 23
percent to 25 percent and Bayrou on 15 percent to 19.5 percent.
Far-right leader Jean-Marie Le
Pen, who shocked France in 2002 when he made it into the run-off
against Jacques Chirac, is credited with 12.5 percent to 16 percent.
The top two contenders will face off on May 6.
With polls suggesting Sarkozy is
guaranteed a place in the run-off, Sunday’s vote has largely come
down to a battle for second place between Royal and Bayrou, who
promises a unity government of Left and Right.
Commentators suggest Royal could
lose to Bayrou if her voters decide he stands a better chance of
beating Sarkozy in round two.
One poll, published Friday by
CSA, showed Royal pulling even with Sarkozy in a run-off vote, but
almost all since January have predicted a Sarkozy victory.
Two leading French newspapers,
the Center-Left Le Monde and left-wing Liberation, have warned their
readers not to vote for Bayrou, saying it would deprive the country
of a true choice if the Left is knocked out of the race.
Royal, 53, took the press on a
walkabout of a market in central Paris on Friday, urging all
left-wing voters to back her in the first round.
Earlier at her Paris campaign
headquarters, she took aim at Sarkozy’s call for a “rupture”
or “clean break” with past politics, saying, “France needs to
be reformed without brutality, without violence, without rupture.”
Royal also attacked Bayrou’s
promise of a unity government of Left and Right, saying the centrist
was “sitting on the fence, which is not a very comfortable place
to be.”
Speaking on his home turf in the
southwestern town of Pau late Thursday, Bayrou, 55, also focused his
attacks on Sarkozy’s rightward shift on questions of immigration
and national identity.
“By driving up tensions between
communities, between origins, between religions, skin colors, France
is being turned into a dangerous place,” Bayrou said. “I want
France to be secure and calmed.”
Sarkozy, 52, spent the last day
of campaigning in the southern Camargue region, where he visited a
bull ranch on horseback, posing for photographers in jeans and
checkered shirt.
Sarkozy has come under increasing
attack from rivals who say his tough line on crime and immigration
are the sign of a dangerously authoritarian streak.
Political rivals and youths in
the high-immigrant suburbs say the policing methods he introduced as
interior minister helped provoke the 2005 riots.
Campaign posters of all the
candidates have been defaced, but reports suggest Sarkozy’s have
had the most attacks, with Hitler moustaches drawn on his face and
devil’s horns on his head.
On Thursday at his final rally in
the Mediterranean city of Marseille, Sarkozy denounced the
“insults and lies” directed at him.
In an interview with Le Parisien
on Friday, he said personal attacks had taken a heavy toll on his
family: “I did not think they would suffer so much.”
Critics accuse Sarkozy of
straying too far onto the territory of Le Pen’s National Front
(FN) in his bid to draw its voters back to the mainstream.
Le Pen, also holding his final
rally Thursday, told supporters in the Riviera city of Nice, a
National Front stronghold, that a “great national wave will sweep
away the oligarchy” in power.
Some 44.5 million voters are
eligible to vote for a successor to President Jacques Chirac, who is
stepping down after 12 years in office and has endorsed Sarkozy.
Voting starts Saturday for some
882,000 citizens in overseas departments and for the 820,000
expatriates who can vote in embassies and consulates abroad.
Polls open at 8 a.m. (0600
GMT) Sunday in mainland France, with the first results expected
shortly after voting stations close at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).
--AFP
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