Leftists set to control French parliament

President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party, bolstered by left-wing allies, is poised to take control of France’s lower house of parliament so he can revamp a country his partisans see as too capitalist and push to save the eurozone through growth.

The conservative party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, which has controlled the 577-seat National Assembly since 2002, will probably lose its grip on power in the final round of voting in a week. Mr Sarkozy was defeated in the May 6 final round of the presidential race.

Mr Hollande is unlikely to get his wish for a pure Socialist Party sweep of the seats of power in France, but he need not fret.

Polling agency projections after yesterday’s first round of voting in legislative elections show the Socialists slightly behind Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party, but other parties expected to support Mr Hollande – including the communist-inspired Leftist Front and the main environmental party – did well.

A left-wing victory in the voting, five weeks after Mr Hollande took office, would brutally jar the French political landscape.

Left-leaning parties are forecast to take between 300 and 366 seats in the next parliament and the conservatives between 210 and 270, according to the CSA and TNS-Sofres polling agencies.

That would be a sharp shift from the current parliament, where the conservative UMP and its allies had 346 seats and leftists 226.

Mr Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement party is trying to save its honour. Leading UMP figures vowed not to make alliances between rounds with the extreme-right National Front, which moved into position to grab its first small presence in parliament in more than 25 years.

Eyes are on the National Front at voting time both because of the stigma of racism and anti-Semitism which clings to the party and because of its potential for cutting into the win margin of the mainstream right.

Socialists or other left-wingers were leading in 70 of 116 districts where the vote count was complete last night, according to official results. The Interior Ministry is releasing results district by district.

Socialists and other leftists won between 31 and 35% of the nationwide vote yesterday, while UMP candidates and their allies won between 34 and 35%, according to estimates by polling agencies CSA, TNS-Sofres, Ipsos and Ifop. The projections, based on actual vote results in select polling stations nationwide, were largely in line with expectations.

Turnout was relatively low, estimated at 57%, well below the 63% in the last parliamentary elections five years ago.

The newly revamped National Front party failed to fully capitalise on the solid third-place showing of its leader, Marine Le Pen, in the presidential race.

The National Front wants to pull France out of the euro currency, secure French borders and stop immigration by Muslims whom it claims are bent on the “Islamisation” of France.

It could still decide races in a number of districts by throwing support to the UMP candidate – or withholding it. And the far right can nourish hopes of winning in up to three districts, according to polling agencies.

Ms Le Pen, with a score of more than 42% in the depressed former coal-mining basin around the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, is among those with a chance of winning next week. She knocked out her bitter far-left rival Jean-Luc Melenchon from the race and will face a Socialist candidate in next Sunday’s vote.

Mr Hollande’s Socialists appealed for support in next week’s final race. Should they lose in a surprise comeback by the right, Mr Hollande would be forced to appoint a conservative prime minister and carry on in what the French refer to as “co-habitation”, in which life can be as tense as within a bickering couple unable to repair their relationship or to divorce.

A Socialist win would give the left control of both houses of parliament and the regions.

Socialist prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault called on voters to give the government a “large, solid and coherent majority” in the second round so “the change you voted for May 6 can be put in motion”.

Mr Hollande promised to rectify what he said was years of injustice under Mr Sarkozy, from making the rich pay higher taxes to creating 60,000 posts in the educational system trimmed by the previous government.

He also promised to ensure that the European Union’s budget-cutting pact to ward off instability was reworked to emphasise growth, not austerity.

The French vote will have an impact on Hollande’s bid to inject the growth-promoting measures, because he needs the political legitimacy that a strong majority would confer to carry weight in his dealings with German chancellor Angela Merkel, opposed to such changes.

He also needs French parliamentary backing to approve bailouts or EU-wide treaties.

Conservatives warned that the Socialists’ spending plans could cripple France just as it and other European countries are being asked to rescue Spain.

Mr Sarkozy’s campaign spokeswoman and a conservative parliamentary candidate, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, claimed that Mr Hollande’s team was already spending so much that it was taking France towards “bankruptcy, a Spain-like, Greek-like situation”.