France's old guard aiming for a shock-free presidential race

PARIS - Extremist candidates who sent a shock down Europe's spine by their success in France's 2002 presidential elections could be sidelined in next year's ballot.

The reason is not because popularity has dwindled for these lone riders of the far right and far left, but because they may fail to get endorsements from at least 500 of France's 42,000 mayors to be able to join the presidential race.

The requirement is a stipulation of France's post-World War II Fifth Republic that ostensibly seeks to keep the battle for the presidency to manageable proportions, avoiding a free-for-all where scores or even hundreds could fight for votes.

In 2002, when many mayors endorsed radicals, hoping for a more democratic race, the extremists caused an upset that reverberates to this day.

The first round of the election saw a massive protest vote as many supporters of the Socialist Party's champion, Lionel Jospin, backed Trotskyist candidates, while supporters of the conservative incumbent, Jacques Chirac, plumped for the xenophobic far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen, head of the National Front.

As a result, Le Pen garnered 16.86 per cent of the first-round vote compared with Jospin's 16.18 per cent, enabling him to fight Chirac, who picked up only 19.88 per cent of votes, in the second round. For the first time in French history, an extreme-right candidate had made it to the runoff.

Although Chirac eventually romped home with 82 per cent of the vote, France agonised about how and why this shock had happened. Many pointed the finger at a corrupt, stagnant political system and poor integration of immigrants.

Now, though, the Socialist Party and Chirac's Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) have taken steps to ensure that vote fragmentation does not reoccur next year. The Socialists, and reportedly the UMP too, have instructed local mayors in their parties not to endorse rival candidates. As a result, Le Pen, the Trotskyists Arlette Laguiller and Olivier Besancenot, as well as renegade Socialists, rightwingers, greens and lobbyists for France's hunting community are scratching desperately to secure the 500 endorsements, which will be counted in February, ahead of the April 22 and May 6 elections.

"It's worrying," said Besancenot, of the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), whose forthright attacks on turgid national politics made him a media star in 2002. "We are going to have to struggle right to the end to reach the threshold."

Le Pen said mayors who had endorsed him in 2002 "had come under threats, various pressures, phone calls which had prompted them not to fulfil their civic duty". He called for mayors to be guaranteed confidentiality as to whom they endorsed.

According to the daily Le Parisien, only 19 per cent of 100 mayors who endorsed Le Pen in 2002 would do so again in 2007, 62 per cent would not and 19 per cent were undecided. As for Besancenot, 24 per cent said yes to re-endorsement in 2007, 60 per cent said no, and 16 per cent were undecided.

Other hopefuls facing this problem include rebel green candidates, a leftwing radical and Bruno Megret, who split with Le Pen to form his own far-right party.

Should the fringe candidates not muster their 500 signatures next year, votes for them will undoubtedly go to the mainstream parties, ensuring a continuity of the classical left-right showdown and avoiding a repeat of the 2002 trauma.