In France, far-right vote casts harsh light on tranquil surface

LIMAY, France -- Deep in Impressionist country, where France shows its true colors along the timeless Seine, a hard-right turn in presidential primaries has cast harsh new light on the surface tranquility.

"What do you expect, with life today?" asked Gisele Roblin, who did not vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen but says she knows why so many of her delicatessen customers did. "Crime, no jobs, fear of the future. People have had it."

In Limay, Le Pen's National Front scored 23.3 percent in the April 21 elections, 6.1 percent more than incumbent Jacques Chirac. Counting splinter candidate Bruno Megret, the far-right vote totaled 27.5 percent.

This town of 25,000, north of Paris, is just one of many in the heartland where French citizens say they are rebelling against center-right, center-left business as usual.

The exacerbating factor here is a large population of North Africans who spill out of a sprawling slum in Mantes-la-Jolie just over the river.

"Desperate French families see immigrants get special benefits while they go deeper in the hole. And still a lot of these foreigners steal instead of work," Roblin said. "They are fed up. Fed up, fed up, fed up."

In other parts of storybook France, such as the lavender-fringed villages of Vaucluse in the south where Arabs and Africans are rare, the National Front polled even more, up to 35 percent.

"I don't think it's racism but rather a message to politicians that they can't keep ignoring the voters who elect them," said Paul Bosquet, a retired official in the southern city of Draguignan.

People worry that Le Pen's "French First" campaign and anti-foreigner diatribes smack of Nazi Germany, he said, but many are more concerned about their jobs, families and homes.

"Our leaders haven't seen the world is changing," said Bosquet, who did not vote for Le Pen. "They can't continue with old patterns, their corruption, with letting crooks and delinquents operate with impunity."

Parties back incumbent

Most political analysts are reserving judgment until Chirac faces Le Pen in the runoff on Sunday.

Nearly all parties have rallied behind Chirac, even though many accuse the president of financial misdealing in office. Twenty-eight percent of the electorate did not vote in the first round, and many are expected to favor the incumbent on Sunday.

Although Chirac is considered a shoo-in, residents are nervously waiting to see whether Le Pen's first-round showing was simply a protest vote or portends a new turn in national thinking.

On the streets of big cities, huge crowds -- a broad mix of the far-left and the conservative mainstream -- march to show their opposition to Le Pen. One popular banner reads, "Vote for the crook, not the fascist."

Although French citizens and immigrants receive essentially equal treatment by the state, the National Front argues that foreigners have larger families and lower incomes, meaning they get more state funds.

And areas regarded as "difficult neighborhoods" -- essentially, immigrant slums -- get substantial government subsidies for education, job training and community development.