To the intense disappointment of millions of French people, the traditional debate, the high point of French presidential election campaigns, will not take place for the first time in 28 years.
President Jacques Chirac put an end to two days of uncertainty about the debate on Tuesday evening, telling supporters at a campaign rally that for moral reasons, he would not appear with the extreme right-wing leader Jean-Marie Le Pen on national television.
An opinion poll published yesterday by Le Parisien showed that 69 per cent of French people wanted the debate to take place. Mr Le Pen had threatened to take a pair of hand-cuffs with him to the television studio - in reference to the financial scandals that characterised Mr Chirac's seven-year term.
The battle against the extreme right "is the battle of my life," Mr Chirac told an auditorium filled with 9,000 supporters in Rennes. "It is a moral battle. I cannot accept that intolerance and hatred become banal. There can be no transaction with intolerance and hatred, no compromise, no debate. One must have the courage of one's convictions, be true to one's commitments." He compared the decision to his past rejection of electoral alliances with Mr Le Pen's National Front. "Whatever the political price, I will not accept a debate with its representative," he explained.
Mr Le Pen responded almost immediately, calling Mr Chirac "a chicken" who "makes insults from a safe distance" and refused "to debate democratically with the candidate chosen by the people."
Mr Le Pen said Mr Chirac's refusal was "an unbearable, inadmissible attack against the rules of the Republic and democracy" and constituted "a pitiful running away." The Élysée Palace had sent mixed signals about a possible debate.
After the election results came in on Sunday night, Mr Chirac's campaign spokeswoman, Ms Roselyne Bachelot, said it would take place. There was a dispute about whether the two men should debate face to face - as demanded by Mr Le Pen - or answer questions in turn, sitting side by side and facing the camera.
Mr Chirac received support yesterday from an unexpected quarter, Le Monde, which was in the past the most assiduous newspaper in pursuing his financial scandals.
For the President to debate publicly with Mr Le Pen would be the equivalent of "discussing cooking with a cannibal", Le Monde's editorial said.
Many voters would suspect Mr Chirac was afraid of being confronted about investigations into his finances, but that was peripheral. It was essential not to accept a debate with a man who was racist and denied the universality of the human condition. "Those ideas you fight; you don't debate them," Le Monde said.
The former socialist justice minister, Mr Robert Badinter, who organised two television debates between Francois Mitterrand and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, also approved Mr Chirac's decision. The raison d'être of the debate was to inform voters, Mr Badinter told Le Parisien, "certainly not to become television entertainment". Had the two candidates met face to face, it "risked becoming, through Mr Le Pen's doing, an unseemly row whose worst moments would have been broadcast throughout the world." France's prestige abroad would have suffered. Mr Badinter was responsible for ending the death penalty in France in 1981. Mr Le Pen has promised to restore capital punishment if he is elected.
Left-wing officials have privately expressed concerns about the "permeability" of the French public to Mr Le Pen's rhetoric.
The National Front leader has seven times been convicted for making racist or anti-Semitic statements, but a personality cult has grown up around him, and his oratory skills mesmerise audiences.
"Our whole campaign is tied to the personal dimension of our candidate," Carl Lang, the secretary general of the Front told Libération.
The Catholic Bishops' Conference has addressed the temptation of Mr Le Pen's charisma and fear-mongering. "In the period that is beginning, we must all rely on intelligence rather than instinct . . . serenity rather than fear," said a statement.
The bishops fell short of asking believers to vote for Mr Chirac, as France's two leading Jewish organisations did.