Chirac allies storm ahead in poll

PARIS, France -- French President Jacques Chirac's conservative allies are poised to seize control of government after voting in the first round of parliamentary elections.

Centre-right candidates trounced the left to pave the way for a landslide election victory in the second and final round of voting on June 16.

In Sunday's poll, Jean-Marie Le Pen's extreme National Front right-wing party failed to attract anything like the support he gained in the presidential election last month.

With an estimated 44 percent of first-round votes, the centre-right took a solid lead on the Socialists and their Communist and ecologist Greens party partners, who scored a total of just under 37 percent amid mass abstention.

CNN NewsPass VIDEO Exit polls predict President Chirac's conservatives looked set for a landslide win in French parliamentary elections. CNN's Diana Muriel reports (June 10) Play video   EXTRA INFORMATION • In-Depth: France Decides 2002

Pollsters are predicting that the centre-right could win upwards of 380 seats in the National Assembly lower house of parliament, where 289 deputies is a majority.

Such a results will strengthen Chirac's position and relieve him of any repeat of his first term of office when he had to contend with a power-sharing arrangement that dogged the French leadership.

But as the votes are counted, it is clear that nearly 35 percent of voters stayed at home.

Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande appealed to left-wingers to mobilise for the second-round of polling.

A visibly shaken Hollande warned left-wing voters against the apathy that led to Le Pen's breakthrough seven weeks earlier, forcing them to vote for Chirac.

"Nothing could be worse for the future of our country than a legislative election where one political camp wins by default out of neglect of civic responsibility," he said.

And former finance minister Laurent Fabius urged: "I want to make an extremely strong appeal to those who abstained. Vote. It takes five minutes and then it's for five years."

The National Front's score dipped to about 11 percent from 15 percent in the 1997 election and pollsters saw it taking two seats at best, maybe none, next Sunday.

Centre-right Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin expressed optimism that his government would win a comfortable majority in the two-round vote to push through its planned reforms on tax and pensions and crime crackdown.

"I'm confident, even though no election is ever played out in advance," he said as he voted in western France.

French newspapers generally hailed the election as a return to mainstream politics.

"Everybody to the right," said Monday's headlines of two very different tabloids, the right-leaning Parisien and left-wing Liberation.

"It is an even stronger victory than Chirac's weak score in the first round (of the presidential elections) had allowed him to expect," Les Echos said.

Even Liberation, the favoured journal of the Parisian left, hailed the centre-right's victory as a re-establishment of order.

"Voters have cleaned the house up. The extremists on the right have been sent to the sidelines and lost the power to blackmail," said the newspaper's founder, Serge July.

Communist daily L'Humanite, whose patron party made a dismal showing in both the presidential election and the opening vote for parliament, said: "The abstention rate beat Olympic records: the disaster continues."

Chirac's most loyal follower among national newspapers, the conservative daily Le Figaro, cheered voters for endorsing the president and for paving the way for a big majority in parliament.

A record 8,456 candidates came forward to contest the 577 seats in France's National Assembly lower house, a crowded field many worry could splinter the mainstream vote and play to the advantage of Le Pen's National Front.

If no one in a constituency wins more than half the votes in round one, candidates there who poll more than 12.5 percent of the registered electorate go through to the final round.