(Adds public prosecutor warning on breaking embargo, details)
PARIS, April 19 (Reuters) – President Nicolas Sarkozy said
on Thursday that French rules barring media and social networks
from publishing exit polls and early election results ahead of
an official embargo were outdated and he would not be surprised
if they were broken.
The Paris prosecutor’s office warned, however, that it had
made special arrangements for police to swoop on any media group
that publishes exit polls or early results of Sunday’s
presidential election before an 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) release.
During the first round of France’s 2007 election, the
websites of several Swiss and Belgian newspapers crashed under
the weight of French web surfers trying to consult them,
prompting some to boost their capacity before the 2012 election.
Sarkozy, who is neck-and-neck with Socialist Francois
Hollande in opinion polls for Sunday’s first-round vote but is
trailing ahead of a May 6 runoff, said it was hard to prevent
leaks in a world dominated by social media sites.
“This does not shock me because the world has become a
village,” he told Europe 1 radio, asked about threats by foreign
media and networking sites to break the rules.
“We have rules which are at times outdated, everybody knows
that,” Sarkozy told Europe 1. “We can’t create a digital
frontier between France and all the other countries in the world
to prohibit others from communicating with France.”
The ban on releasing partial results before the last polling
station is closed is aimed at preventing late voters being
swayed in their decision by early news on the voting trend.
France’s Poll Commission, which regulates pollsters, plans
to outline tougher measures on Friday to enforce the rule and
said this week it would not hesitate to sue lawbreakers.
The current punishment for publishing an opinion poll on
election day is a 75,000 euro ($98,400) fine. Publishing partial
results before the official release time is punishable with a
3,750 euro fine, and candidates can call for a re-vote if they
feel that leaks may have swayed late voters.
The Socialist-leaning daily Liberation said in an editorial
on Thursday that it also saw the embargo rule as archaic and
said readers should look at its website from 6:30 p.m., in a
hint it plans to break the rules.
Voters look set to turn their backs on conservative Sarkozy
in the two-round vote and usher in France’s first left-wing
president in 17 years just as fears resurface over Europe’s
sovereign debt crisis.
Sarkozy, who has said he will quit politics if he loses his
re-election battle, also criticised campaign rules that mean
television and radio must give equal time to all candidates,
meaning fringe contenders with just a couple of percent support
get as much air time as mainstream candidates.
($1 = 0.7621 euros)
(Reporting by Thierry Leveque, Yann Le Guernigou and Emmanuel
Jarry; Writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by Alessandra Rizzo)
