The Center-Right`s Good Chance of Dominating the Parliament

If the center-right wins a crushing victory in the second round of parliamentary elections in France, the lurch to the right in Western Europe is expected to gain momentum. On the other hand, the left, which has spearheaded French politics since the 1980s, is under threat of losing ground. The big difference between the voter support and the number of parliamentary seats results from the way the election is conducted.:

The election is divided into the first and second rounds. In the second round, for which only candidates with more than 12.5% of registered first-round votes are qualified, candidates who win the largest number of vote are elected to the five-year term of office in the National Assembly.

The far-right including the National Front (FN) led by Le Pen, who made a stir in the presidential election, is expected to get only two seats with 12.6% of vote. In the first round, which took place amid World Cup fever, a mere 64% of 41 million voters took part. The turnout rate was the lowest ever since the Fifth Republic.

The determinant of the center-right`s victory was the national consensus that they have to avoid the repetition of a controversial cohabitation government whereby a president of one color has shared power with a prime minister of another. The first reason for the center-right`s victory was that it was the first general election conducted after the term of presidential office was reduced to five years to avoid the repetition of cohabitation.

The second reason was that voters listened to president Jacques Chirac`s appeal for giving support to the center-right so that it can win a "true majority" in parliament for a smooth management of state affairs. In pre-vote opinion polls, 51% of voters responded that they should not allow the creation of another cohabitation government this time.

Poor performance of the far-right

Among the far-right, the FN garnered 11.5% of vote. The vote decreased from about 20% in the presidential election and from 14.94% in the first round of the 1997 general election. The dismal vote result came because many supporters of the far-right thought that a far-right candidate has low chance of winning under the small constituency system. That is why a large number of them did not show up for the voting.

There was also an analysis that with the reelection of president Chirac, voters` discontentment with the left-wing government has died down to some degree. Mr. Le Pen argued after the election that the far-right have few winners, while it won as much as 13% of vote because of France`s undemocratic electoral system.

Jei-Gyoon Park phark@donga.com