FRANCE:The French legislative election campaign officially started yesterday, with the result - another victory for President Nicolas Sarkozy and his right-wing UMP party - almost a foregone conclusion.
About 44.5 million voters are eligible to participate in the two-round election on June 10th and 17th. The 577 deputies' seats in the National Assembly are being contested by 7,750 candidates.
A poll published by Le Figaro newspaper yesterday showed 40 per cent of voters will give their first-round vote to the right-wing UMP, 28 per cent to the opposition socialist party (PS) and 15 per cent to centrist François Bayrou's new democratic movement, known as "modem".
The Greens have 4 per cent of support, while far-left and far-right parties received 3.5 per cent each. To reach the second round, a candidate must obtain 12.5 per cent of the vote in their constituency.
Based on the above opinion poll scores, the UMP would obtain between 365 and 415 seats in the National Assembly, the PS between 137 and 153 seats and the modems between two and 10 seats. A party must win 20 seats to establish a parliamentary group.
These elections are likely to spell the end of the communist group, while the Greens would be lucky to hang on to their three seats.
Mr Sarkozy had implied he would lead the UMP in the legislative campaign, so there has been some surprise he has delegated the task to prime minister François Fillon, who met leading UMP figures yesterday, and is to meet today with the party's deputies. The UMP executive is considering a campaign poster with a photograph of Mr Fillon, rather than Mr Sarkozy, under the presidential slogan, "Together, everything becomes possible".
By taking a back seat in the legislative campaign, Mr Sarkozy may be attempting to counter criticism of his seeming omnipresence. The PS is demoralised and divided since Ségolène Royal's failure to win the presidency, and no one in the party is even suggesting they might be able to win a majority and impose a left-right "cohabitation" on Mr Sarkozy.
The only electoral argument mustered by socialists and modems is that there must be as many opposition deputies as possible to keep him in check.
"We are facing a power who wants to crush, who wants to dominate, who wants to hold all the switches. There is peril and there is urgency," said François Hollande, the Socialist Party leader.