Fresh from trouncing far-right challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen, French President Jacques Chirac launched his campaign to win parliamentary elections next month by naming a fellow conservative as prime minister yesterday.
Chirac, who won a record 82 percent of Sunday's runoff vote as the French resoundingly rejected Le Pen's anti-immigrant platform, named Jean-Pierre Raffarin, 53, to replace Socialist Lionel Jospin, humiliated victim of Le Pen's shock breakthrough in a first round of presidential voting two weeks ago.
The announcement came barely an hour after Jospin tendered his resignation and that of his government during a 13-minute morning visit to the Elysee Palace offices of Chirac, with whom he spent five years sharing power in an awkward "cohabitation."
"The president of the republic has named Monsieur Jean-Pierre Raffarin prime minister and has asked him to form the new government," the Elysee Secretary-General Dominique de Villepin announced to waiting reporters in the palace courtyard.
Raffarin, a moderate right-wing senator and head of the Poitou-Charentes regional council in western France, will now form a government that will be at the center of the conservative campaign to win parliamentary elections on June 9 and 16.
Chirac, 69, who campaigned on a platform pledging reforms to boost the French economy and action on crime, was re-elected on Sunday by the highest margin in the 44-year history of the Fifth Republic. Le Pen got 17.9 percent of the vote.
Yet the result was more of a rejection of Le Pen's anti-immigrant policies than a vote of confidence for Chirac.
The US, Russia and governments across Europe hailed a victory seen as restoring France's image on the world stage, but some analysts noted that Le Pen's anti-EU "Brussels-bashing" had clearly appealed to many French voters.
Chirac's Gaullist Rally for the Republic declared the parliamentary election campaign open yesterday by urging voters to hand them victory next month and end the ungainly "cohabitation" power sharing some have blamed for aiding Le Pen's ascent.
Though the son of a former government minister, Raffarin has a grass-roots image that has become his trump card as voters turn against the capital to demand more power at the local and regional level and politicians who understand their concerns. His only previous national post was as minister for small business and commerce from 1995 to 1997.
As Chirac targeted the legislative elections, most of France woke up in a mood of chastened relief for having handed Le Pen a resounding defeat at the ballot box.
"PHEW" declared the front page of the daily Liberation, which had urged its largely left-leaning readers to ensure Le Pen's defeat by voting for Chirac despite widespread discomfort over the corruption allegations that have dogged his career.
Unbowed by the voters' crushing verdict in what was probably his last run at the presidency, Le Pen, a 73-year-old former paratrooper, called the outcome a "stinging defeat for French hopes" and pledged to fight another day at the parliamentary elections.
RSS