Exit polls showed French Socialists had lost control of the nation's parliament on Sunday, with the mainstream right winning a landslide election that would give conservative President Jacques Chirac more power than at any time in the last five years.
Chirac's Union for the Presidential Majority, a coalition of rightist parties, captured between 360 and 378 seats, winning control of the 577-seat National Assembly, France's lawmaking body, exit polls showed.
The Socialist Party won between 153 and 165 seats.
According to exit polls, all conservative parties won from 385 to 399 seats. The left, including the Socialists, the Communists and the Green Party, won from 178 to 192 seats. The extreme right National Front failed to win any seats.
Control of the National Assembly goes to the party or coalition with an absolute majority of 289 seats.
All but 58 seats that were already decided in a first round of voting last week were being contested on Sunday.
The result was a stinging defeat for the French left, which found itself abandoned by voters frustrated by rising crime and a government paralyzed by "cohabitation," a situation that exists when the president and prime minister hail from opposite political parties.
The swing toward the right in France was just the latest tilt in that direction by voters across Europe. Conservative parties have also made gains in the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Portugal.
The head of Chirac's caretaker government, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, now looks set to run the government for the next five years. Speaking at his headquarters in Paris, he said "elections don't solve problems" and pledged to live up to voter demands.
By nightfall, voter turnout was estimated at 61 to 63 percent, which would be a record low for a legislative election under the Fifth Republic, established in 1958 under a new constitution. It was the fourth time in less than two months that the French have gone to the polls, including two rounds of the presidential race.
Some big names who served in the Cabinet of former Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin lost their races, including Martine Aubry, the former labor minister who was instrumental in implementing the 35-hour workweek; Dominique Voynet, Jospin's environment minister; and Jean-Pierre Chevenement, the former interior minister.
The Communists were in serious trouble, with party leader Robert Hue battling for his political life in a tough re-election battle for a seat from Val-d'Oise, north of Paris.
Raffarin, who would have lost his job if the left won, had confidently released his schedule for the coming week, including a commemoration for the late Gen. Charles de Gaulle and a meeting with Spain's prime minister.
The extreme-right National Front was running in 37 legislative districts but appeared to end up with no seats because only the candidate with the most votes wins in each district.
Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen complained that the system was stacked against smaller parties.
"We are the only country in which a party that arrived in second place in the presidential (race) and third place in the legislatives may have no deputies" in parliament, Le Pen said. The National Front currently has no seats in the legislature.
Le Pen finished second to Chirac in the May 5 presidential runoff.
In the outgoing parliament, leftists held 314 seats and rightists 245, while five deputies were unaligned. Thirteen seats were empty.
(China Daily June 17, 2002)
