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Paris: Marine Le
Pen, who stood third in the first round of the presidential polls
in France, is spoilt for choice as she gets to decide who will
live in the Palais de l'Élysee, the French president's official
residence.
Incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy faces an uphill task after
being pipped by his main rival Francois Hollande of the Socialist
Party, the first time a sitting president has lost in the first
round since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.
After the first round of voting, the French political debate took
a sharp turn towards the right, or far right.
And for a good reason.
The only real surprise of the first round held Sunday was the
share of votes captured by the extreme right-wing party, Le Front
National.
In various opinion polls, held in the run up to the vote, the
party, which has been led by Marine Le Pen, daughter of the
founder of the party, for the past five years, was often hovering
below the key 15 percent mark and at times even falling behind the
extreme left candidate Jean Luc Melonchon.
However, in the final count, Marine Le Pen led her party to record
heights, falling barely short of 18 percent mark, while Melonchon
was way behind with 11.11 percent of the votes polled.
In what could be indeed a shocker for the Socialist Party and the
other multiple left front candidates, Le Pen got substantial
support from the working class in France. In several bastions of
the working class throughout the country, she was ahead of all the
other candidates.
The performance of Le Pen is key for the second round as the two
finalists, President Sarkozy and his challenger Hollande, have
already begun the battle for the second round and not
surprisingly, the 18 percent voters of Le Pen hold the key to the
eventual victor.
These voters would normally fall into the lap of Sarkozy's party,
UMP, but Marine Le Pen has so far not called for her supporters to
vote for either Sarkozy or Hollande, saying that she would
announce her next step in a rally in Paris May 1, five days before
the second round.
This is a very clever stratagem as both the candidates are keen on
taking the maximum number of votes from Le Pen and other
candidates and often it helps when they receive formal support.
Marine Le Pen is now clearly eyeing the parliamentary elections
slated to be held in early June and anything that she says or does
in the run upto the second round would be with the sole objective
of bagging the maximum number of parliamentary seats.
While she declares her policy, the two candidates are not wasting
any time in trying to woo her voters.
Less than 24 hours after the election results, Sarkozy spoke on
behalf of the voters who supported Le Pen, talking protectionism,
shutting out immigrants, keeping the European Commission under a
check and also battling for revival of a "strong France", which
incidentally is also his slogan for the current election.
But as the most unpopular president of France since the Second
World War and the only president not to have scored more than his
principal rival in the first round, Sarkozy knows he has a lot of
ground to cover in the next two weeks, perhaps a tad too much.
As France heads for the second round of what has clearly been one
of the most virulent campaigns, the outcome will have significant
implications not just for the third largest European economy but
indeed for the entire Eurozone economy.
The first signs of this impact were visible Monday when bourses
all over Europe and even the US took a beating, worried that their
worst nightmare, a Hollande victory followed by Socialist Party
gaining control of the parliament, could actually happen.
Most people still believe that Hollande is so far ahead of Sarkozy
that he would win and with a gap of eight percent separating the
two, according to opinion polls held Sunday, the outcome of the
second round could be considered as a given.
(Ranvir Nayar
can be contacted at ranvirnayar@yahoo.co.in)
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