Chirac set to cull cabinet after election blow

FRENCH President Jacques Chirac was last night preparing to wield the axe on his cabinet after his party took a hammering in local elections.

Decisions were expected quickly from Mr Chirac, who met discreetly with Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin himself a possible candidate for the chop.

The official word from Mr Chirac's office was only that the president was working with Mr Raffarin "on decisions he must take in the very next days".

Few doubted that ministers would go, perhaps as early as this week, as Mr Chirac sought to respond to voters' rejection of his conservative government's economic reforms.

But drafting in fresh faces will not mask the dilemma laid bare by Sunday's stinging defeat in regional elections. Many voters will not swallow cuts to health, pensions and other treasured social protections the centre-right government says must be reformed for France's economic well-being. In its most impressive electoral showing in a generation, France's opposition bulldozed its way across the regional elections in a crushing blow to Mr Chirac.

The victory march by the reborn opposition Socialists and their leftist allies isolated the conservative president with a losing team and an unpopular party midway through his five-year term. The results jolted the political landscape to its core and amounted to an angry call to the French leadership to change course.

Painful reforms instituted to save the social security system from bankruptcy and bring France's budget deficit in line with European Union rules have turned wide swathes of French society against Mr Chirac's governing conservatives.

For Mr Chirac who hit a peak in popularity at home as the leading voice against the United States over the Iraq war the electoral drubbing for the right has forced him to refocus on his domestic flank.

Radio and TV reports referred to a "tidal wave" for the Socialist-led opposition.

Many political observers were speculating whether Mr Chirac will now sack Mr Raffarin, his comrade-in-arms who has sought to bring about thorny domestic reforms.

Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande said the victory for the left was the biggest since fellow Socialist Francois Mitterrand won the presidency in 1981.