Far-Rightist Le Pen Is Mighty in France

Far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen rocked the political landscape in the first round of France’s presidential election Sunday, upsetting Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and setting up a runoff with President Jacques Chirac.

Le Pen, a former paratrooper who has been accused of neo-fascism and racism throughout a rowdy political career, is the first far-right candidate in French history to advance to the final round in a presidential election. His triumph was a calamity for the Socialist Jospin, who announced that he will resign after the May 5 runoff and retire from political life.

With 99.5% of the ballots counted, the center-right Chirac had 5,510,180 votes, or 19.65%. Le Pen had 4,783,440 votes, or 17.08%, and Jospin had 4,501,843, or 16.05%. The remaining ballots were split among the rest of the 16 candidates.

The stunning result reflected worries among voters about an alarming rise in crime--which Le Pen blames largely on immigration from North African countries--and the perceived failure of Jospin to impose law and order during his five years in office, according to many analysts.

Rather than a groundswell of extremist sentiment, the surprise breakthrough by Le Pen’s National Front party also seemed a product of protest votes against a stagnant establishment, divisions on the political left and a near-record 28% level of voter absenteeism.

The 73-year-old Le Pen, a patriarch of the European hard right who is infamous for crude remarks about minorities, clearly relished his arrival at center stage Sunday night. He said the voters had punished Jospin and Chirac, president since 1995, for the ineptitude and remoteness of the political elite.

“I think it’s a great defeat for the two leaders of the establishment,” Le Pen said in a television interview. Earlier, he addressed his followers with the nationalistic, populist flair that makes him one of France’s most fiery speakers. He made a pointed appeal for the support of voters of all ideologies and races, part of a continuing effort to moderate his image.

“Don’t be afraid to dream, you the little people, the excluded, don’t be infected by the old divisions of left and right,” he declared. “You the miners, the metalworkers, the workers of all the industries ruined by Euro-globalization. . . . Those who are the first victims of crime in the cities and villages . . . know that I will be there at the side of all who suffer.”

The political math makes Le Pen’s chances of ultimate victory minimal. More than 40% of the votes Sunday went to nine left-of-center candidates, including Jospin. Several of those contenders vowed to mobilize against Le Pen’s party in the presidential vote, even if that meant supporting Chirac, and in crucial legislative elections in June that will decide the true balance of power here.

Nonetheless, Le Pen has blindsided and sidelined the French left in the presidential race. After years in which voters resisted the advance of center-right forces that have gained power in neighboring Spain and Italy, the Socialists confront a potentially devastating scenario: a Chirac win in the runoff and a subsequent onslaught by the center-right and extreme right in the parliamentary elections.

Jospin Declares His Loss a ‘Thunderbolt’

Jospin’s abrupt decision to withdraw from politics acknowledged the size of the blow. He called it a “thunderbolt.” The stern veteran Socialist took full responsibility for the debacle, though he also blamed the “demagoguery of the right and the divisions of the left.”

“Seeing the extreme right represent more than 20% of the votes in our nation and their principal candidate confront the right-wing candidate in the second round is a very worrisome sign for France and our democracy,” said Jospin, 64.

Jospin has a reputation for integrity, but he comes across as rigid, especially on the campaign trail. As the smoke of his political crash-and-burn cleared, analysts said he was the victim of his “cohabitation” with Chirac and his inability to unite a spectrum of leftists who range from his mainstream Socialists and Trotskyites to old-school Communists and Greens.

“He opened a space among the young and the popular sectors to the radical left,” political commentator Philippe Chriqui said Sunday night. As Jospin’s campaign veered from social democratic moderation to an assertion that he represented “the real left,” the analyst said, the candidate was unable to “stop the hemorrhage to other leftist candidates.”

But Jospin’s fall and Le Pen’s rise grew out of a more fundamental disillusionment with government and politics, analysts said. The record number of candidates--many of them protest candidates and marginal extremists of left and right--and low turnout were symptoms of a malaise.

And Le Pen clearly read the voters’ mood by hammering away at the problem of security: The issue mixes delicate questions about crime, ethnicity and national identity that Jospin seemed unwilling to tackle or even discuss.

Both Chirac and Le Pen blamed Jospin for the fact that crime has risen steadily in recent years. It went up by about 8% in 2001. A sense of lawlessness has been worsened by cop-killings, brazen holdups with automatic weapons and last month’s massacre of eight city council members in a Paris suburb by a mentally disturbed gunman. Police complain that they are handcuffed by weak laws, timid politicians and insufficient resources.

Moreover, the crackdown on Islamic terrorist networks in France after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States rekindled concern about the potential convergence of crime and Islamic extremism in the country’s increasingly large and menacing North African immigrant ghettos.

Gloomy housing projects are a fixture in urban France, even in small cities, and youths are trapped in a subculture of drugs and violence. Prisons have become a hotbed of recruiting by Islamic extremists; the Middle East crisis has triggered a wave of violent anti-Semitic acts blamed mainly on thugs of North African descent.

Fear of crime for many French is synonymous with fear of “ghetto youth,” a symbol of the society’s failure to integrate immigrants from North Africa.

Enter Le Pen. He has railed for three decades that immigration causes crime and unemployment. He wants to expel all illegal immigrants, give French nationals priority for jobs and benefits, and crack down on lawbreaking in the slums. He also has called for France to pull out of the European Union and other international organizations.

Although his rhetoric has been guarded during this campaign, his platform should be seen in historical context. In the past, he provoked outrage with crude comments about Jews, foreigners and AIDS. In 1989, he made up a pun combining the name of a Jewish Cabinet minister here with a word for the ovens in Nazi death camps. He also suggested that AIDS patients should be confined to “AIDS-atoriums.”

Brawler, Rugby Player and Paratrooper

Son of a Breton fisherman, Le Pen studied law while earning a reputation as a brawler, rugby player and enthusiast of far-right causes. He lost an eye in a fight and sported a black patch for years, then switched to a less piratical glass eye. He also served as a paratrooper in the former colonies of Indochina and Algeria.

Le Pen founded the National Front in 1972. The party gradually gathered momentum, sending deputies to the French and European parliaments and winning control of cities such as Toulon and Orange in southeastern France, a stronghold of anti-immigrant sentiment.

Le Pen has won nearly 15% of the vote in his previous presidential bids, making him a kingmaker of sorts. But his party has slumped in recent years because of internal divisions. He barely scraped together the signatures needed for his candidacy this year.

Now he is back in the spotlight with a vengeance. Marchers took to the streets to denounce him in Paris and other cities in spontaneous rallies Sunday night.

Chirac, a clear favorite for reelection, set a somber tone for the campaign of the next two weeks. Without mentioning Le Pen by name, he said the French will have a fateful decision to make in the runoff.

“The moment of choice is before you,” Chirac said. “It is about the future of France. . . . I appeal to France, that diverse, humane, warm France that we love. . . . I hope that in the coming days, each of us proves our responsibility, tolerance and respect.”

*

RELATED STORIES

Elections: Schroeder-linked state government voted out in Germany; Socialists take back Hungary. A3

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

In the Words of Jean-Marie Le Pen

“We are being submerged, and it won’t happen when our grandchildren have taken our places, but by the end of this century. We are today in the process of losing, through the blindness and cowardice of our leaders, our identity as a nation, as the French.” -- 1987 speech at La Trinite-sur-Mer, France, Le Pen’s birthplace.

*

“A minor detail in the history of World War II.” -- Speaking about the Nazi gas chambers in September 1987. Le Pen was fined in court for the remark.

*

“This vanguard of millions of foreigners will turn itself into an army and then into a flood. France will become an Islamic republic.” -- March 1988 speech in Amiens, France.

*

“Patrick Buchanan is the candidate who is probably the closest to me. Yes, without a doubt, yes.” -- On the U.S. presidential race, in a May 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Times.