* If Hollande wins, experts expect left-wing parliament
* Far right to split conservative vote, hurt Sarkozy’s UMP
* Some analysts see UMP breakup if Sarkozy loses
By Paul Taylor and Nicholas Vinocur
PARIS, May 2 (Reuters) – Socialist Francois Hollande can
expect a left-wing parliamentary majority if he wins Sunday’s
presidential runoff, and the far-right National Front could
shake President Nicolas Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party to its
foundations.
If Hollande is elected, as all opinion polls show, history
suggests voters will grant him a working majority in legislative
elections on June 10 and 17, as they have each time a new
president has just been installed.
The only doubt is whether his centre-left Socialist party
would have an absolute majority or need support from Communist
or Green deputies to pass laws.
“The tradition of the Fifth Republic (since 1958) after a
presidential election is that the legislative polls confirm the
people’s choice,” said Jean-Luc Parodi, a veteran political
scientist attached to the CEVIPOF institute.
“The parliamentary election is usually marked by asymmetric
abstention which favours the winning side in the presidential
race,” he told Reuters.
Sarkozy’s UMP party, the dominant force in French politics
for a decade, could crack under pressure from a resurgent
far-right as factions feud over whether to shun or embrace
backers of Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Front (FN).
If the FN replicated Le Pen’s 17.8 percent score on the
first presidential ballot on a high turnout, it could split the
right-wing vote in more than half of the 577 constituencies,
making it easier for the Socialists to beat Sarkozy’s UMP party.
Under the two-round constituency voting system, candidates
who win more than 12.5 percent of registered voters – not of
votes cast – are entitled to enter the decisive second ballot.
Le Pen won more than 12.5 percent of registered voters in
353 constituencies on April 22. However turnout in parliamentary
elections is normally 10 to 20 points lower than the 80 percent
rate in the presidential vote, so the National Front may reach
far fewer runoffs.
Nevertheless, analysts expect the far right to be on the
second ballot in more than the record 133 constituencies it
achieved in 1997, when it split the right-wing vote, effectively
handing the parliamentary election to the Socialists.
EXISTENTIAL QUESTION
This raises an existential question for the UMP, formed to
unite France’s quarrelsome centre-right movements after a scare
in 2002 when Le Pen’s father muscled his way into the
presidential election runoff against Gaullist Jacques Chirac.
“There is a risk of the breakup of the UMP,” said Stephane
Rozes, president of the CAP political consultancy.
Some on the party’s right flank are keen to end the
quarantine around the National Front while the main party
leaders have flatly ruled out any electoral or government
alliance with Le Pen or her party.
Defence Minister Gerard Longuet, who cut his political teeth
with the extreme-right, drew furious rebukes from UMP grandees
this week after telling a far-right weekly that Le Pen was now
an “interlocutor”. The row was a foretaste of the mayhem that
might erupt after a Sarkozy defeat.
“If Sarkozy loses, the parliamentary elections will be a
chainsaw massacre for the UMP,” said Jean-Yves Camus, a
political scientist specialised in the National Front.
Le Pen has said her candidates will stay in the race
wherever possible “to make the system implode”. She envisages a
“recomposition” of the right around her own party, while some
centrists dream of rebuilding a powerful bloc inside or on the
ashes of the UMP.
“The FN is in a unique position to apply pressure on the
Right, and Marine Le Pen herself has made no secret of her
desire to see the UMP edifice tremble and fall,” said Alexandre
Deze, professor of political science and author of the book “The
National Front: On the Path to Power?”
The far-right party may only win a handful of seats, most
likely Le Pen in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, her niece
Marion Le Pen-Marechal in the southern town of Carpentras and
lawyer Gilbert Collard in the southern Gard region.
But Le Pen believes that some UMP lawmakers, faced with
looming defeat in the second round, will defect to her “Marine
Blue Rally” – an alliance led by the National Front (FN).
WRECKING BALL
Her party’s biggest role could be as a wrecking ball,
decimating the UMP’s parliamentary ranks.
UMP lawmakers are contemplating this prospect with alarm.
“If we lose on Sunday, it’s going to be very difficult for
us, especially since we’ll have the FN tripping us up,” said one
conservative deputy, speaking on condition of anonymity because
he did not want to openly envisage Sarkozy’s defeat.
“Many of our friends could bite the dust in three-way races.
If we win (the presidential election), we should be able to
limit the damage. But either way, the legislative elections are
going to be difficult for us.”
If Sarkozy wins on Sunday against all odds, some experts
believe he could retain a majority in the National Assembly,
although not as big as the 339 UMP and centrist deputies out of
577 which it had in the outgoing legislature.
“If he wins, I expect that the natural legitimacy of a
re-elected right-wing president would prevail. I don’t believe
the National Front could prevent him securing a parliamentary
majority in that case,” Camus told Reuters.
However, some pollsters believe Le Pen’s party could
engineer the defeat of enough UMP incumbents to leave parliament
without a centre-right majority, possibly forcing a re-elected
Sarkozy into sharing power with a centre-left government.
Such a period of left-right “cohabitation” would render
policymaking difficult at a time of crisis in the euro zone and
could spook financial markets.
If Hollande wins, some investors are concerned that he could
be forced to the left to placate hard left or ecologist
lawmakers on whom his government might be dependent.
The Socialist Party signed an agreement with the Europe
Ecology/Greens party last year to back Green candidates in 30
constituencies deemed winnable in return for support for a joint
policy platform.
However, Greens presidential candidate Eva Joly’s weak 2.3
percent presidential score cast doubt on that deal, with several
Socialist incumbents who were due to stand down for a Green
candidate vowing to stay in the election.
Parodi and Camus both said they doubted the Greens would win
the 15 seats required to form a parliamentary group.
The Communists are more strongly implanted in traditionally
left-wing regions and seem better placed to retain the group
they had in the outgoing legislature, especially since they are
likely to cut a deal with the Socialists on mutual support
against the right.
(Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Giles Elgood)
