Far right looms again as French go to polls

PARIS -- Ultimately crushed in last month's presidential vote, France's extreme right returns to center stage in legislative elections that start today -- this time as a potential spoiler.

The voting, which ends in a second round June 16, could give the National Front a handful of seats in the National Assembly, polls show. But the real fear among moderates is the extremist party could tip the balance in races for the 577 voting districts.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is not a candidate himself, predicted Friday that his party's candidates would end up in two-way duels or in three-way "triangular" races in more than 300 districts.

"I'm rather optimistic," he told a news conference Friday. "The force on the rise is the National Front."

Le Pen has dangled the possibility of another "big surprise" in the parliamentary election, a reference to the shock wave that rippled through France, and the world, after the April 21 first round of the presidential vote put Le Pen in a runoff against the conservative incumbent, President Jacques Chirac.

In the second round, the mainstream right and left united to keep Le Pen out of the presidential Elysee Palace, giving Chirac a landslide victory with 82 percent of the vote.

The ingredients that led to Le Pen's initial success in the presidential race are again present, from a record number of candidates -- an average 14 for each seat in parliament -- to the possibility of a low voter turnout after a lackluster campaign.

Polls consistently show Chirac's mainstream right defeating the left, which is rudderless and in disarray since its poor showing in the presidential election. That loss was so humiliating that Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin left politics.

No one fears that Le Pen's dream of creating a strong far-right block in the National Assembly will happen. The two-round majority voting system all but ensures that will not occur.

"Even if the National Front gets 20 percent of the vote, they will probably get only three to five seats in the National Assembly," said Dominique Moisi, deputy head of the French Institute for International Relations..

But the National Front can act as a spoiler, Moisi noted, and that is a real concern among mainstream politicians.

Chirac desperately needs to win a parliamentary majority to avoid a second period of paralyzing power-sharing like the five tense years he spent running the country with Jospin.

However, he has ordered rightist candidates not to make alliances with the National Front in between rounds in order to win. To avoid three-way races in which the National Front might win, candidates backing the president are to withdraw after the first round if they do not place first or second -- and let the left win, or risk being thrown out of the party. The left has issued similar instructions.

"No alliance, no accord," Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said Thursday night in Marseille.

Another fear is that citizens may already have forgotten the lessons of the presidential race, and stay away from the polls. That would boost the National Front's chances.

Three days before the vote, the left and the right were making a last effort to mobilize their followers, encouraging citizens to cast a "useful vote" today to immediately weaken the National Front.