French Citizens in Panic at Crisis of Democracy

Shocking Outcome of the Vote: Although opinion polls are showing that Jacque Chirac will score a landslide victory over Le Pen (78 percent vs. 22 percent), the nation is overwhelmed with a panic by the fact that the extreme rightist racist is running into a runoff for a President of the country that stands on the national ideology: Freedom, Equality, and Philanthropy.

The Socialist Party failed going into a runoff for the first time in past 30 years since 1969, breading down the competition structure of runoff between the left and right wings.

French government announced the result of the first round of the Presidential election that President Chirac won 19.67 percent followed by Le Pen (17.02 percent) and Prime Minister Jospin (16.07 percent).

Party`s leader Le Pen commented, “I have overcome all the obstacles with efforts, patience, and the help of God.” Jacque Chirac appealed for the support to him in a runoff, saying “the value of the Republic is in crisis.¡°

Why Le Pen? The supporting rate of Le Pen for the first round of the Presidential election was around 10 percent early this month and jumped to 13-14 percent around 13th and stayed at 14 percent until the last poll on 19th. Therefore, it was expected that he might not be able to catch up Prime Minister Jospin who had marked 18 percent of support. However, the floating voters over 40 percent seem to rush for Le Pen, giving him 17 percent support. The unexpected outcome of the election seems to be influenced by the voters who are fed up with the re-duplication of the Presidential election between Chirac and Jospin in 1995, no differences in the political opinions between the two, and the corruption of President Chirac and the perjury of Jospin about his past record.

In addition, extreme rightist Le Pen dexterously ate into the hearts of the floating voters influenced by stagnated economy, 9.11 terror, and increasing crime rate and committed himself to such policies as the objection to immigration and the revival of capital sentence to strengthen the security that was the major issue of the election.

Crisis of French Leftists? Prime Minister Jospin suffered a crushing defeat and Arlette Laguiller, the extreme leftist candidate of Lutte Ouveirere, who was expected to compete for the 3rd, won only 6 percent. Robert Hue of Parti Commuiste Francais, who had won over 5 percent votes in the past elections, also won only 3.5 percent votes. Le Pen spoke venomously to the Communist Party, “Above all, I am very pleased that the Communist Party is to be closed.”

The leftist fate may be dependent on whether they could avenge their loss in the general election in June after the Presidential election. The rightist wind is aggravating in Europe, once largely governed by the leftist governments in late 1990s, by losing leftist governments from Austria, Spain, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Portugal, and at last France.

Jei-Gyoon Park phark@donga.com