PARIS - French voters went back to the polls Sunday for parliamentary elections expected to give conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy an overwhelming mandate for ambitious reforms aimed at modernizing France.
Polls were predicting a crushing victory for Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) which was on course to extend its current majority of 359 seats in the 577-member National Assembly.
It would be the first time since 1978 that a governing party has retained its majority in the lower house of parliament.
Voters were choosing deputies in 467 constituencies after 110 seats were decided in a first round ballot a week ago. All but one of those went to the UMP or its allies on the right, in what the press described as an unstoppable ‘blue tide’.
One month after taking over from Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy had called for a sweeping mandate for the reform programme that was the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
He has called a special session of the new parliament opening on June 26 to examine a first raft of bills to reduce taxation, encourage overtime, grant universities more autonomy, tighten immigration and toughen sentences for repeat offenders.
Sunday marked the fourth time French voters have gone to the polls in two months, capping an election season that has ushered in a new era of politics.
Sarkozy, the 52-year-old son of a Hungarian immigrant, has appointed a broad-based government in which prominent leftist Bernard Kouchner was named foreign minister and the first woman of north African origin, Rachida Dati, was named justice minister.
He has pledged to pursue the policy of openess to include more politicians from the left and from minorities in new appointments to junior ministries expected after the parliamentary vote.
Demoralised and deeply divided following the defeat of their candidate Segolene Royal in last month’s presidential election, the Socialists were bracing Sunday for another humiliation.
The Socialists currently hold 159 seats in parliament and party leader Francois Hollande, who is also Royal’s partner, said candidates were locked in tight races in half of those.
‘In 80 seats it’s a question of a few hundred votes either way, so a strong turnout for us can make all the difference,’ Hollande said after casting his vote in his southern constituency of Tulle.
But turnout at midday was only slightly higher than in the first round of voting a week ago, with close to 23 percent of voters casting ballots.
An electoral rout is expected to set the stage for a leadership contest and much soul-searching within the ranks of the Socialist Party after losing three presidential elections in a row.
The Socialists have warned that a massive parliamentary majority would lead to a dangerous concentration of powers in the hands of Sarkozy who was elected to a five-year term.
Royal, who remains the Socialists’ most popular politician, has set her sights on the party leadership after Hollande said he would not seek a new mandate.
After a massive turnout of close to 85 percent in the presidential elections, the first round of voting in the legislative polls drew a poor participation rate of about 40 percent.
The new Assembly looks set to be dominated by the UMP-Socialist divide.
The Communist Party is expected to lose several of its current 21 seats and will not have enough to form a parliamentary bloc.
The Greens will have three at most, with none for the far-right National Front, according to polls.
Francois Bayrou, who formed a new centrist party to build on his strong third-place showing in the presidential elections, may be the only one elected from his Democratic Movement.
Voting ends at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT), with reliable estimates of the results due immediately after.
Source : www.khaleejtimes.com
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