No landslide but Sarkozy’s party dominates assembly

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy’s centre-right allies won a solid majority in yesterday’s parliamentary election, but failed to secure a widely expected landslide, poll forecasts showed.

Polls by three leading research institutes said after a second and final round of voting that Mr Sarkozy’s bloc would win 341-350 seats in the 577-seat lower house against 202-210 for the Socialist party. Other leftist parties were seen winning under 20 seats.

Pollsters had predicted after the first round vote on June 10 that the ruling center-right would win up to 470 seats, but its popularity suffered a beating in recent days after ministers admitted they were considering a sharp hike to sales taxes.

Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party had 359 seats and its centrist allies 29 seats in the outgoing parliament, while the Socialists had 149.

It is set to be the first time since 1978 that a governing party retained its majority in the lower house.

The first round vote one week ago saw 110 seats decided. All but one of those went to the UMP or its allies on the right, in what the press described as an unstoppable “blue tide”.

The Socialists had warned that a huge UMP majority in parliament would lead to a dangerous concentration of powers in Mr Sarkozy’s hands and turn the legislature into an annex of his already strong presidency.

A special session of the new parliament will open on June 26 to examine the first bills to reduce taxation, encourage overtime, grant universities more autonomy, tighten immigration and toughen sentences for repeat offenders. Mr Sarkozy, the 52-year-old son of a Hungarian immigrant, has appointed a broad-based government in which prominent leftist Bernard Kouchner is foreign minister and the first woman minister of north African origin, Rachida Dati, was named justice minister.