Voting in France's presidential election tomorrow is a dreadful prospect for 74-year-old Jean Derouet. A man of the left, he was resolved to cast his ballot for his sworn enemy, conservative incumbent Jacques Chirac, to help crush the extreme right.
"I will vote for Chirac against my will," he said. "I have no choice."
Derouet is not alone. Fear is the driving force for many casting ballots to keep extreme-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen from power.
"Le Pen scares me," said Derouet, a retiree and one of 400,000 people who took part in an anti-Le Pen march in Paris on Wednesday, May Day. "There must be a high percentage of votes against him."
For Derouet and others, it is not enough for Chirac, a Gaullist widely favored to win, to defeat Le Pen. They raise the specter of the extreme-right leader and his National Front making inroads in parliamentary elections next month. Le Pen, they say, must be crushed.
Voting for Chirac will be so distasteful for some leftists that a few local officials have suggested voters use gloves to handle the ballot. The possibility that leftists would cast votes for Chirac wearing gloves, or clothespins on their noses, is taken so seriously that the Constitutional Council warned that such votes could be annulled.
Chirac, 69, and Le Pen, 73, won the most votes in the April 21 first-round upset that knocked Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin out of the running. Chirac is widely favored to win the election, but his first-round showing, 19.88 per cent, was the lowest ever by an incumbent president. Now he needs the left to help ensure the huge margin that would keep the extreme right at bay in the June 9 and 16 legislative voting.
AP