Right to enjoy stranglehold on power in France

Already ensconced in the Elysée Palace and key French state institutions, President Jacques Chirac's right will have unprecedented power to launch promised reforms if Sunday's second round of elections confirm its grip on parliament.

"Not one institutional obstacle will limit the president's power to act," the left-leaning daily Le Monde said of ambitious pledges including an overhaul of France's state-dominated economy and devolution of powers to the regions.

"Everything is under control," it added, contrasting the new unfettered outlook for Chirac with the policy logjam that marked the "cohabitation" with the Socialist-led government of ex-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin entailed since 1997.

If Chirac has been transformed in the space of seven weeks from perhaps the weakest president in France's 43-year-old Fifth Republic to possibly the strongest, he has paradoxically none other to thank than his arch-foe Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Chirac's first round score in the presidential election - less than 20 per cent - was the lowest scored by an incumbent. Anti-immigrant, populist Le Pen surged by slamming the political elite and harping on about the sleaze revelations that have long dogged the head of state.

Yet the mass trauma provoked by Le Pen's success turned to Chirac's advantage in the May 5 runoff as a record 82 per cent of voters from the left and right rallied behind him to see off the far right challenge.

After Sunday, Chirac allies are almost certain to surge into power for the next five years with a huge National Assembly majority over left-wing rivals struggling to explain why voters should vote for them and another "cohabitation".

With the right already controlling the Senate upper house, conservative legislation should race through parliament at the speed of light. It will not be held hostage to the same delays and watering-down which, for example, made Jospin's ambitious autonomy bill for Corsica barely recognisable by the end.

Conservative victories in 1998 regional and 2001 municipal elections, moreover, mean the right can count on thousands of mayors and regional councillors to cheer on their own proposals to decentralise power away from Paris.

A majority of conservative appointees in the Constitutional Council means the right wing need not fear the country's top legal arbiter, which was a thorn in Jospin's side not only over Corsica but also his moves to restrict mass redundancies.

"We are ready to present parliament with major legislation," Chirac's caretaker Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who has promised reforms at the rate of one month to start with, told Reuters during a campaign tour of the regions last week.

An extraordinary session of parliament is scheduled for July to present four laws, including a possible mini-budget offering a quick tax rebate as a taster of plans to slash personal and corporate tax by e30 billion in five years.

With budget policy hemmed in by European Union commitments on deficits, economists say a question remains over whether France can afford the tax cuts Chirac has promised.

Yet Chirac also wants to present legislation by the end of the year covering a potentially major boost to French military spending that he has made his personal project.

Around the same time, Raffarin wants to get in motion a decentralisation process which could unleash demands for greater power in French regions from Brittany to the Basque country.

With other hot potatoes including a controversial plan to introduce an element of US-style private fund financing in the state pension scheme, no wonder some Chirac allies are warning that the right should not let power go to its head.

"The government must be very attentive about how it goes about things, to work with a certain modesty and tact," interim Justice Minister Dominique Perben urged this week.

Lack of tact was a failing of the right some seven years ago, when an even greater parliament majority than forecast this time around persuaded the then prime minister Alain Juppe to rush headlong into a draconian and unpopular budget austerity course.

In the worst bout of unrest since the 1968 student uprising, there followed a wave of strikes, anti-government rallies and, by 1997, an early dissolution of parliament and new elections.

The result? A landslide victory for the left.