`Pink tide' held back in French provinces, poll shows

The French right maintained its traditional strength in the provinces in the first round of municipal elections on Sunday. But it risks losing Paris, Lyon and Toulouse in the second round on March 18th.

Attention in the second round will focus on Paris, where the socialist candidate Mr Bertrand Delanoe obtained 31.31 per cent to a humiliating 25.74 per cent for the official right-wing candidate, Mr Philippe Seguin. Mr Seguin's list in the 18th arrondissement, where he is standing, won only 19 per cent.

Mr Seguin refused yesterday to merge his lists with those of the outgoing mayor, the renegade Gaullist Mr Jean Tiberi. To hold Paris, the right must reach a semblance of union before lists for the second round close tomorrow night. Mr Tiberi performed better than expected, with 13.92 per cent city-wide and 40.07 per cent in his home 5th arrondissement. Mr Tiberi is already formally under investigation for vote-rigging, so there were questions asked about the 40.07 per cent.

The disarray on the right in Paris weakens President Jacques Chirac, who was mayor of the capital for 18 years. The loss of Tulle, the main town in Mr Chirac's home region of Correze, was a further setback - more so because the first secretary of the socialist party, Mr Francois Hollande, took the mayor's office from the Gaullist RPR incumbent with 53.1 per cent of the vote. The Chiracs own a chateau in Correze, where Mrs Bernadette Chirac is a regional councillor.

Overall, the right won 48 per cent of the vote, compared to 42 per cent for the left - the same as in the last municipal elections six years ago. The socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin did not achieve the vague rose or "pink tide" predicted by pollsters.

And most of the 27 "plural left" cabinet ministers who stood for local office were beaten. The communist transport minister Mr Jean-Claude Gayssot and the Greens environment minister Ms Dominique Voynet lost the right-wing towns they tried to conquer.

The socialist employment minister Ms Elisabeth Guigou and the European affairs minister Mr Pierre Moscovici are certain to lose in the second round. French voters rank the mayor's office second in importance after the presidency, but the public wants someone local who looks after their interests on a day-to-day basis - not a political "star" who is "parachuted" in from Paris.

The other main lesson of the election was that French voters are tired of big political parties. Despite Ms Voynet's defeat, the ecologists' party performed better than predicted, with scores ranging between 10 and 20 per cent in most cities.

Mr Yves Contassot, the head of the Greens list in Paris, spent Sunday night successfully negotiating with Mr Delanoe to merge their lists in the second round. With 12.35 per cent of the vote in the capital, the Greens were able to impose their terms.

In Toulouse, which the centre-right Baudis family has governed for two generations, a completely new alternative left party called Les Motivees won an amazing 12.4 per cent of votes and, like the Greens in Paris, could deliver a former right-wing stronghold to the socialists.

The core of Les Motivees is a second-generation north African immigrant rap music group called Zebda. The name is a play on words because children of immigrants are known as beurs and Zebda means "butter" in Arabic. Les Motivees wants greater efforts to integrate immigrants.

In Lyon, former defence minister Mr Charles Millon was ostracised by the mainstream right after he allied himself with the extremist National Front in the last regional elections. He has never renounced that alliance, but won 23.11 per cent of the vote, compared to 24.45 per cent for the official candidate of the right, Mr Michel Mercier, who has withdrawn from the race.

If the right fails to rally behind the tainted Mr Millon, it will lose one of France's most conservative cities.