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17 June 2012| last updated at 09:31AM

Parliamentary vote set to cement France's swing to the left



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PARIS: France heads to the polls on Sunday for a vote expected to cement the country’s swing to the left by giving President Francois Hollande a clear parliamentary majority to push his agenda.

 

Opinion polls released before the end of campaigning at midnight Friday  showed Hollande’s Socialists and their parliamentary allies on track to take  control of France’s lower house National Assembly.
 
Hollande, who defeated rightwinger Nicolas Sarkozy in May’s presidential  election, has urged voters to give him a majority as he seeks to steer France  through Europe’s debt crisis, rising unemployment and a faltering economy.
 
The French vote risks being overshadowed however by elections in Greece  that could determine its future in the eurozone, amid concern over the  shockwaves that a Greek euro exit would send through the global economy.
 
The polls showed France’s Socialists winning between 287 and 330 seats in  Sunday’s run-off election — almost certainly enough to secure a majority in  the 577-seat Assembly.
 
With polls showing the Greens, who are close allies of the Socialists and  already in government, set to win up to 20 seats, Hollande is all but  guaranteed to get the parliamentary backing he needs.
 
The Socialists and other left-wing parties came out on top in last Sunday’s  first round of the vote, winning 46 percent to 34 percent for Sarkozy’s UMP  party and its allies.
 
Pollsters predict the UMP and its allies will take between 210 and 263  seats in the run-off.
 
The vote will also be a key test for Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant and  anti-EU National Front (FN), which took 13.6 percent in the first round — far  above the four percent it won in the last parliamentary election in 2007.
 
Le Pen, who said the result confirmed her party’s position as France’s “third political force,” is hoping the FN will be able to take a handful of  seats including one for her in a rundown former mining constituency near the  northern city of Lille.
 
Polls indicate the FN are set to win up to three seats, including for Le  Pen and for Marion Marechal-Le Pen, the FN leader’s 22-year-old niece, in the  southern Vaucluse area.
 
After a hard-fought presidential race, the campaign for the parliamentary  elections has been lacklustre, with the only major excitement generated by an  incendiary tweet fired off by the country’s new unofficial first lady.
 
The Twitter message by Hollande’s companion Valerie Trierweiler wished good  luck to Socialist dissident Olivier Falorni, who is running against Segolene  Royal — the president’s ex-partner and mother of their four children — in the  western town of La Rochelle.
 
There has long been speculation of intense rivalry between Royal and  Trierweiler. Hollande stood loyally by Royal as she battled Sarkozy for the  presidency in the 2007 race, but he had reportedly been in a relationship since  2005 with Trierweiler, a twice-divorced 47-year-old mother of three.
 
The UMP said the tweet was an inappropriate intrusion of Hollande’s  personal life into politics, but analysts said that despite widespread media  coverage it was unlikely the scandal would have much impact on the Socialists’  result. -- AFP

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