The French right are heading for a parliamentary landslide after a historic score in Sunday’s first-round vote promised President Nicolas Sarkozy a majority to secure his economic reforms.
Pro-Sarkozy MPs could win up to 470 seats in the 577-seat national assembly, according to predictions by polling firm CSA. The divided Socialist opposition was forecast to lose between 60 and 140 MPs, according to pollsters.
The ”blue tide” of conservative seats across the country was expected to confirm Sarkozy’s high public support since his election last month. Strong parliamentary backing would allow him to immediately begin his ”economic revolution”, slashing taxes, loosening the 35-hour week, limiting strike powers and cutting the numbers of public sector workers.
Sarkozy’s UMP party has ruled for the past five years, but although it was a deeply unpopular government, he has managed to rebrand himself as a kind of opposition leader. A UMP win in next Sunday’s second round would be the first time a sitting government has been returned to power since 1978.
Although some MPs, such as the Prime Minister François Fillon, won their seats outright on Sunday night, most face a run-off. Fillon hailed the people’s desire to ”relaunch the nation”. Early estimates showed the Sarkozy bloc took 47% of the vote and the Socialist party 29%.
The turnout, at 61%, was the lowest in a parliamentary first round for 40 years.
Confident of victory, Sarkozy has scheduled a special summer parliamentary session to push through his first measures, including â,¬11-billion of tax cuts as part of his plan to ”shock” the economy back to life.
He will also legislate to curb unions’ powers, ensuring minimum transport services so that the country cannot be shut down during strikes; increase sentences for repeat offenders; tighten immigration rules and give more autonomy to universities.
Ségolène Royal, the defeated Socialist presidential candidate, appealed to voters to turn out and back ”a new left”. She is positioning herself to bid for the party leadership, but parliamentary losses are likely to worsen internal feuding.
The Communist party, which in the 1970s had as many as 86 seats and currently has 21, is likely to be reduced to between six and 13. The centrist François Bayrou, who won 18% in the presidential election and founded a new party, the Democratic Movement, may win only between one and four seats after most of his MPs quit to support Sarkozy. Because of the two-round, first-past-the-post system, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, which has no seats, is not expected to win any. But his daughter Marine Le Pen faces a run-off in Pas-de-Calais. – Guardian Unlimited Â