France says big "No" to Le Pen

France said an overwhelming "No" to extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen yesterday in a presidential election runoff that returned conservative incumbent Jacques Chirac by a landslide.

Backed by all the country`s mainstream parties and a multitude of interest groups, Chirac won between 81.7 and 82.5 per cent of the vote in a head-to-head second round that turned into a referendum on the far right, exit polls showed.

"The result is clear - extreme right 17.5, democracy 82.5," declared outgoing Socialist Finance Minister Laurent Fabius soon after voting ended across France.

It was easily the biggest victory in the history of France`s Fifth Republic. But in an atypical contest it said nothing about Chirac`s record or the people`s view of corruption allegations that have swirled around the Gaullist leader.

"France has reaffirmed its attachment to the values of the Republic. I salute France," Chirac, 69, said in a televised speech from his campaign headquarters.

He said he had "heard and understood" the call for change from an alienated electorate that had pitched Le Pen into the runoff at the expense of Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and pledged to respond with action on crime and jobs.

Le Pen, unbowed by two weeks of massive street protests and the verdict of the voters, said Chirac had won the election by "Soviet methods" and pledged to fight another day in parliamentary elections scheduled for June 9 and 16.

"I won`t have to wait long to see the allies of this morbid coalition tear themselves apart," the 73-year-old leader of the anti-immigrant National Front party said of his opponents.

Le Pen, who once called the Nazi gas chambers a "detail" of history, stunned all of Europe on April 21 when he edged Jospin into third place to enter the runoff with 16.9 per cent of the vote to 19.9 for Chirac.

Le Pen`s projected percentage of yesterday`s vote was just slightly higher than his first round showing but down on the combined score of 19.2 per cent that Le Pen and an extreme-right rival, Bruno Megret, had garnered two weeks ago.

Turnout was estimated at over 80 per cent of France`s 41 million voters, well up on the first round when a record 28 per cent abstention rate helped boost Le Pen`s share of the vote.

In Paris, police cordoned off the Place de la Republique square, where a mainly young crowd of around 2,000 revellers waiting for a Chirac victory party in heavy rain sent up a huge cheer when the exit polls flashed across a giant TV screen.

"We`ve won, we`ve won, we`ve won!" the crowd chanted. Lines of riot police vans ran from there to the nearby Place de la Bastille square, centre stage of the 1789 French Revolution, where left-wing groups planned to congregate to celebrate the defeat of a man they have labelled the "fascist".

The unevenness of yesterday`s contest threw the focus forward to the June legislative elections when the left, taking credit for the scale of protests against Le Pen after Jospin`s humiliating defeat, hopes to win and return to government.

"Now politics will take its usual course and the debate between right and left will resume," said Socialist notable Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister and a potential prime minister if the left triumphs in June.

"The president has been elected on a mandate of 80 per cent, which has never happened before, to defend republican institutions and reject the extreme right. But as for the rest, the French people have a free choice," Strauss-Kahn said.

Chirac, whose first round score was the lowest on record for an incumbent, made clear he would use yesterday`s result to push for a conservative victory in June and an end to five years of paralysing power-sharing with the French left.

Acknowledging the public concerns that put Le Pen in the runoff, he said a transitional government he will name after Jospin resigns today would make fighting crime a priority and put France on a path of economic growth and more jobs.

"We will respond to this appeal," he said.

Le Pen tapped a vein of discontent with mainstream politics with a "France for the French" message that capitalised on a loss of identity in an integrated Europe and a globalised world.

Despite yesterday`s defeat, his National Front party could yet play a spoiler role in June by splitting the right-wing vote and increasing the prospects of another left-right "cohabitation".

"I`m happy that the national bloc has remained solid," Le Pen said. "See you at the legislative elections."

Many analysts say a further five years of left-right power-sharing would shake France`s political system to the core and fuel calls for constitutional change.

Among much of the electorate, however, the main reaction yesterday night was one of relief that a challenge to the country`s image abroad and to its cherished values of liberty, equality, fraternity had been resoundingly beaten off.

"It`s total joy. This is what counts - it`s the best result that could have been hoped for," said 82-year-old Claude Guilmet, a retired doctor out on the streets of Paris who lived through the Nazi occupation of France.

"What`s clear is that for the French, and regarding the rest of the world, this is a relief. Because there was a moral trauma in France that made us a bit shameful and a bit scared."

Left-wingers reluctantly voting for Chirac had threatened to cast ballots wearing clothes pegs on their noses in protest at the "odour of corruption" they say has tainted the president`s first term in office.

In the Socialist-held southwestern village of Villemagne, local left-wingers dressed in surgical coats offered to douse voters with disinfectant after they left the polling booth.

But symbolic gestures were rare after the Constitutional Council, which oversees elections, warned they would break voting secrecy laws and could result in votes being annulled.