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By Emma Charlton
France’s leading presidential
rivals Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal headed Monday into a vote
run-off in two weeks time that pits right against left in a battle
for the future of the country.
Both immediately staked out their
positions after first round results were announced late Sunday and
were to start on a grueling new series of campaign meetings.
In a first round contest that
attracted a near record 84.6-percent turnout, right-winger Sarkozy
led the field with 31.11 percent with Royal, a socialist, on 25.84
percent.
Centrist candidate Francois
Bayrou was a distant third on 18.55 percent and far-right National
Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen fourth on 10.51 percent.
None of the other candidates won
more than 5 percent, according to final figures from the interior
ministry.
The climax in the battle to
succeed outgoing President Jacques Chirac, 74, who has been in the
Elysee palace since 1995, will be on May 6.
An opinion poll by IPSOS after
the first round predicted Sarkozy would beat Royal by 54 percent to
46 in the run-off, and he appeared confident.
“My dear compatriots, I want
only one thing: to gather the French people around a new French
dream,” he said to wild cheers.
The tough-talking former interior
minister has promised a “clean break” from France’s political
consensus, pledging to reduce the number of state employees,
restrict trade union powers and liberalize the economy by cutting
taxes.
Royal, aiming to become
France’s first woman president, pledged to be the champion of
those who want to change France “without brutalizing it.”
She told supporters at a
post-election rally in western France: “We have a clear choice
between two very different projects for society.
“I call on all those who
believe it is possible to reform France without brutalizing it, who
want a triumph of human values over the stock market, who want an
end to the painful rise of insecurity and precariousness, to come
together.”
Her campaign has focused on
promises to change France without unraveling its generous social
model.
The two will put their starkly
different visions to a public test in a face-to-face televised
debate on May 2.
Before then, the Sarkozy camp
said the Union for a Popular Movement leader would appear in Dijon
on Monday and Rouen on Tuesday and a series of television
appearances this week around more public events.
The Socialist Party was
organizing a rally for Royal on Monday and she was to be in
Montpellier on Tuesday and Lyon on Thursday.
The other candidates were
trounced: Olivier Besancenot (Trotskyite) won 4.11 percent, Gerard
Schivardi (Trotskyite) 0.34 percent, Arlette Laguiller (Trotskyite)
1.34 percent, antiglobalization campaigner Jose Bove 1.32 percent,
Green party candidate Dominique Voynet 1.57 percent and Communist
leader Marie-George Buffet 1.94 percent.
The Catholic nationalist Philippe
de Villiers won 2.24 percent, and Frederic Nihous, candidate of the
hunters’ party, secured 1.15 percent.
The figures do not include the
ballots of about 820,000 French voters from overseas which will be
published later in the day.
Royal’s result was a huge
relief for the opposition Socialist Party which had feared a repeat
of the 2002 shock when then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was
humiliatingly knocked out of the race in the first round by Le Pen.
This time Le Pen admitted he had
made an “error of judgment” following his worst performance
since his first election campaign in 1974, and analysts say it was
likely the 78-year-old’s last shot.
Five far-left candidates evicted
in round one urged supporters to vote for Royal, but she and Sarkozy
must both go all out to court Bayrou’s supporters.
Though his small Union for French
Democracy party has for years been allied to the right, the first
round campaign saw him veer leftwards.
French editorialists applauded
the massive turnout and said the prospect of a clear left-right
battle between Sarkozy and Royal was a sign of democratic
renewal.
--AFP
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