Voters disillusioned on eve of French election

Reuters/AFP/Paris

A French citizen looks at posters of the French presidential candidates at the French embassy in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic

France’s presidential candidates observed a one-day truce yesterday on the eve of a first-round vote expected to send President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist challenger Francois Hollande through to next month’s run-off.Final polls before a mandatory media blackout on campaigning from midnight on Friday showed Hollande narrowly ahead of the conservative leader for today’s first-round vote but the comfortable winner of the second round on May 6.Parisians went about their business without being accosted by pamphleteers, while the campaigns’ websites, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds were left without updates and broadcasters had to find other subjects to interview.But, while Sarkozy ate lunch with campaign staff in Paris, Hollande did risk angering the electoral commission with a limited walkabout in his electoral stronghold, the rural town of Tulle in the central Correze region.The Socialist leader insisted he was just visiting the market, as he would any weekend morning he was in town, but he did greet well-wishers.“Rainy Saturday, happy Sunday,” a florist declared, amid an intense shower.“I hope so. Are you preparing flowers for tomorrow?” Hollande replied.“Now’s the time,” she replied.“Yes, now’s the time,” he said with a smile.Voting began yesterday in French overseas territories, including the north Atlantic islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon just off the coast of Canada.Voting in the first round began yesterday in France’s far-flung overseas territories – islands in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans – where 882,000 people enjoy full voting rights as citizens of the republic.Off the coast of Canada, voting began at 8am local time (1000 GMT) on the tiny French islands of St Pierre and Miquelon, with 4,923 registered voters, then voting moved on to Caribbean territories.Meanwhile, expatriate French voters living around the world began queuing at their consulates to take part.The left-wing daily Liberation emblazoned its front page with the headline “A strong left” against the backdrop of a blue ocean under open skies, mocking the slogan and imagery of Sarkozy’s “A strong France” campaign.The pro-Sarkozy Le Figaro stuck doggedly behind its champion, but doubts clouded its front page editorial, which warned all those thinking of voting far-right or centrist that second round would depend on the first.Privately, Sarkozy’s top supporters have begun to admit that if Sarkozy fails to regain the momentum and slip ahead of Hollande today, he will have too much ground left to make up before the May 6 showdown.France is a nuclear-armed power, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and the tenth biggest economy in the world in terms of GDP. Its executive president wields extraordinary personal power.Sarkozy has, in the teeth of much criticism of his hyperactive leadership style, made the office still more influential by downgrading the role of his prime minister and taking day-to-day charge of matters of state.The eventual winner of the May 6 vote will still have to win legislative elections in June to make sure of his or her authority, but any French leader with a parliamentary majority has wide room to manoeuvre.Many of the 44.5mn registered voters have complained about a lacklustre campaign, and the prospect of a record abstention looms over today’s vote in mainland France.On the streets of Paris, disappointed voters said that the main candidates had ignored the pressing challenges facing their country, including unemployment running at a 12-year high, and gloomy economic prospects.“The campaign has not been serious enough. The important issues have not been discussed,” said Frederic Le Fevre, a self-employed businessman. “They’ve focused on childish arguments, throwing blame at each other.”Candidates argued for weeks about halal meat and the cost of a driving licence.Even the leading contenders tried to win the limelight with largely symbolic proposals, like Hollande’s plan to scrap the word “race” from the constitution and Sarkozy’s offer to bring monthly pension payments forward by eight days.An Ifop poll in early April suggested that 32% of registered voters might not bother to vote in the first round.Hollande, mindful of an upset in 2002 when far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked out Socialist Lionel Jospin in the first round amid the highest-ever abstention rate, warned supporters against complacency at a closing rally on Friday.“It’s the sixth of May when we will have a president but April 22 will decide the dynamic one way or another,” he said.After trailing Hollande for months, Sarkozy edged ahead in first-round voting intention surveys for a few weeks, helped by his strong response to a shooting spree by an Al Qaeda-inspired gunman who killed seven people in southwest France last month.He lost that lead in the last week before the election, and polls on Friday showed Hollande winning the first round by 28% to 27%, and taking the second by 55% to 45%.It would be the first time in France’s Fifth Republic, founded in 1958, that an incumbent president has not finished top of the first round.Polls in mainland France were due to open today from 8am to 6pm (0600 to 1600 GMT), with voting stations in big cities remaining open two hours longer.The first official results will be released after the last voting booths close at 8pm.Hollande, who has promised to raise taxes on large corporations and people earning more than 1mn euros a year, would be France’s first left-wing president in 17 years.With the eurozone in crisis, that prospect has placed the strained finances of the bloc’s second largest economy in the spotlight.The risk premium investors charge for holding French 10-year bonds over German Bunds rose above 1.50 percentage points on Friday in a possible foretaste of market jitters over an Hollande victory.Traders think that the Socialist may face pressure to go beyond his centre-left programme if a resurgent hard left makes gains in June parliamentary elections and holds the balance of power.Hollande was catapulted to the Socialist candidacy by the arrest of former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York in May on charges of sexually assaulting a hotel maid.Strauss-Kahn was cleared of criminal wrongdoing but remains mired in an investigation into a prostitution ring in France.Frustration with Hollande’s bland manner and Sarkozy’s flashy style has allowed more radical candidates to flourish.National Front leader Marine Le Pen is running third on 16%, a fraction below the vote achieved by her father Jean-Marie when he shocked France by reaching the second round in 2002.Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, a Communist-backed firebrand, has stormed into fourth place with around 14%, capitalising on frustration at economic stagnation and an anti-capitalist backlash against the world of finance.Under the banner “They do not represent us”, left-leaning protesters from towns across France held a march in central Paris yesterday.In France, opinion poll institutes are permitted to take samples from ballot boxes during polling, so the estimates they release at 8pm are generally an accurate measure of the result and the figures will lead television news.