French Elect Chirac, End Socialist Reign

In a decisive victory, Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac was elected France’s president Sunday, severing a 14-year Socialist lock on the office and completing a conservative sweep of political power begun with legislative elections two years ago.

With an 80% turnout on a summer-like day, voters favored Chirac, a two-time prime minister and political veteran, over Lionel Jospin, the 57-year-old Socialist challenger, by a margin of 53% to 47%.

Chirac, who had lost the past two presidential elections to Socialist Francois Mitterrand, will succeed his 78-year-old nemesis, who is ill with prostate cancer and did not seek reelection. Chirac, 62, becomes the fifth president of the Fifth Republic, created by Charles de Gaulle in 1958, and the first Gaullist president in 21 years.

For the United States, the new era in France is unlikely to mean any significant change of policy. The new president, who speaks English and, as a youth, attended summer school at Harvard University, has promised to maintain France’s strong and generally friendly ties with both the United States and Germany, two of its most important allies.

As Chirac supporters filled the streets, honking car horns and leaping for joy in fountains around Paris, the relaxed president-elect appeared beneath the crystal chandeliers of the packed grand salon at City Hall.

“I express my deep gratitude to all those who have voted for me, and I salute all the others with respect,” he said in a five-minute speech designed to heal the wounds of the election campaign. “I will be the president of all the French. I understand the gravity of the task in front of me.”

Chirac said the country’s main battle will be against unemployment, which stands at 12.3%.

“We need a new approach, and with each new reform we will ask one question only: Will it be good for employment? And the same thing for exclusion,” he said, referring to the homeless and others hurt by France’s lengthy economic crisis.

Half an hour earlier, Jospin had conceded in a speech marked by grace and courtesy--a rarity on French election nights.

“The French citizens have expressed their opinion, and the decision was, no doubt for many in France, a very difficult choice,” Jospin told supporters at his Left Bank campaign headquarters. “I congratulate Jacques Chirac and wish him good luck.”

The former professor and education minister added, however, that he will continue to press his demand for change in the country. “Our program will not stop now, because it carries so much hope for the future of our country,” he said.

The 32 million French voters who cast ballots Sunday gave Chirac a solid victory, by a margin larger than Mitterrand’s first win in 1981. But political analysts said the results also showed that the Socialists remain an important force.

“A new era is opening in France,” said Alain Duhamel, one of the nation’s top political analysts. “This election has brought a new president--but also a new leader of the opposition.

“The size of the Socialist vote couldn’t have been imagined even a month ago,” Duhamel added. “Jospin is obviously going to play an important role in the opposition.”

The night air of Paris and other French cities was filled with the joyful sounds of celebration Sunday.

Cars clogged the famed Avenue des Champs Elysees and the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe, the scene of French celebrations of war victories since Napoleon’s time. A giant tricolor French flag waved gently in the breeze at the Arc, where dozens of heads of state will gather today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

Several thousand people gathered at the Place de la Concorde, watching giant television screens, singing the national anthem and cheering as Chirac’s motorcade raced through the streets from the mayor’s office to his campaign headquarters. Young supporters chanted, “I love Jacques! I love Jacques!” as they danced in the streets.

“We’re going to be able to say to our children that this was the end of the Mitterrand era,” said Denis Brunetti, who joined revelers at the Concorde. “This will be the Chirac generation. We can go abroad and be proud of our new leader.”

Chirac won’t officially take office until later this month. But the French will be expecting him to quickly convert his campaign rhetoric into significant change.

The large number of protest votes in the first round of the election on April 23 suggested widespread dissatisfaction with the political elite. And it reflected deep unhappiness with the unemployment rate, with growing inequality between the haves and have-nots and with a steady fall in the quality of life. Many analysts predict a wave of strikes in coming weeks by union members seeking higher wages.

In his acceptance speech, Chirac, who crisscrossed the country in a grass-roots campaign like no other in French history, alluded to those concerns, saying he wants “an impartial state, where the people in government are not isolated from the people who chose it.”

In the first round of voting, the right-wing forces of Jean-Marie Le Pen managed 15% of the vote. Le Pen refused to endorse a candidate in the runoff, calling it a “despicable choice,” and he followed through on his promise to vote a blank ballot. About 2 million blank ballots were cast, twice as many as usual, suggesting that Le Pen, along with his anti-immigrant platform, remains a powerful force in the country.

Chirac’s victory places a substantial amount of power in his hands. He will, of course, be the leader of one of the world’s most powerful democracies. But under French law, the president has enormous strength if his party also is in power.

As leader of the Rally for the Republic, Chirac guided the conservatives to victory in 1993 legislative elections, winning control of 80% of the seats in the lawmaking National Assembly. Party colleague Edouard Balladur took the job of prime minister, and when his popularity soared he decided to challenge his longtime friend.

Balladur placed third in the first round, which knocked him out of the race, and threw his support behind Chirac. On Sunday, Balladur expressed “very sincere good wishes for the new president and, at the same time, for France.”

The animosity created by the campaign, though, makes it highly unlikely that Chirac will ask Balladur to continue as prime minister. The leading candidates for that post are Alain Juppe, the foreign minister, and Philippe Seguin, the president of the National Assembly.