Chirac Trounces Extremist

French President Jacques Chirac sailed to a resounding reelection victory Sunday over far-right candidate Jean- Marie Le Pen, capitalizing on high turnout and crossover leftist votes to block a surprise extremist challenge that had provoked an uproar.

Chirac, a veteran leader of the center-right, won 81.9% of the vote to Le Pen’s 18.1% in the runoff presidential election, according to official results with 96% of ballots counted. Le Pen’s showing was much weaker than had been expected, given his strong showing in first-round voting April 21 when he won 17%, placed second to Chirac and beat out Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and 13 other candidates.

Chirac’s lopsided win Sunday indicated that an extraordinary wave of leftist-dominated street protests in the last two weeks had halted the momentum of Le Pen, a pugnacious 73-year-old ex-paratrooper with a history of neo-fascist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant activism. Le Pen’s failure to substantially improve his numbers suggests that his upset last month did not result from a surge of political extremism but rather from voter discontent with a political elite seen as aloof and unresponsive on delicate issues: rising crime, persistent unemployment and social conflict involving Muslim immigrants.

In his televised victory speech, Chirac acknowledged that the strange and raucous campaign revealed a national crisis, but he said the French had reaffirmed their values at a vital moment in their history.

“I salute France, faithful to itself, faithful to its ideals,” Chirac said. “I salute the French, fond of solidarity and liberty, eager to open up to Europe and the world. . . . I have heard and understood your appeal for the republic to endure, the nation to unify, politics to change.”

Chirac, 69, has a lot of work to do. He was elected president in 1995, capping a three-decade career during which he served as prime minister and as mayor of Paris. Especially after recent corruption scandals, voters see the tall, suave and perpetually tanned president as charming but untrustworthy, according to polls.

The French are weary of government gridlock. For five years, a center-left government has been teamed in an uneasy “co-habitation” with the more conservative Chirac, diluting the formidable powers of the presidency. With Jospin set to resign as prime minister as soon as today, Chirac must quickly put together a government that shakes off the Le Pen scare and takes vigorous action.

One of the first moves, according to well-informed police officials, will be the creation of a “super ministry” to overhaul a demoralized law enforcement system that is the top concern of the French today.

“Liberty is security, the fight against violence, the denial of impunity,” Chirac said. “Beating back insecurity is the top priority of the state for the future.”

In addition to anti-crime measures that may give him an air of president-as-sheriff, Chirac promised to cut taxes and bureaucracy, spur economic growth and fight discrimination in all its forms. Along with pointed references to intolerance and extremism, that was as close as he came to mentioning his longtime nemesis Le Pen, whom Chirac is known to despise.

The president must also gird for June legislative elections in which he hopes to take control of the National Assembly. Although the center-right’s chances look good, the strong 80% voter turnout Sunday indicates that leftist voters flocked to the polls. That could mean that the left has begun to recover from the apathy and division that led to the startling defeat of Jospin, political analysts say. Turnout in the first round of presidential balloting was about 72%, a near-record low.

“Chirac was not elected because of a platform but a simple mandate: Fully revive democracy,” said Francois Holland, the first secretary of the Socialist Party, insisting that the left was crucial to the outcome. Looking to next month’s elections, Holland called for a continuing mobilization of a new anti-Le Pen coalition encompassing “the forces of youth, labor and culture who went into action during recent days.”

Le Pen’s National Front does not appear likely to win more than a few legislative seats; it currently has none. Still, the far right’s proven appeal to former Communist voters will affect the policies of the future government, regardless of its composition.

Although Le Pen had virtually no chance of victory Sunday, even some government officials had expected him to add conservative votes and pull in close to 25%. The volcanic Le Pen, who lost an eye in a brawl years ago and seems on the verge of throwing a punch most of the time, reacted with trademark defiance. Speaking at his headquarters on a hill in suburban St. Cloud just west of Paris, he blamed mainstream politicians, the media and the left.

“This is a harsh defeat of French hope,” Le Pen said. “Nonetheless, we are above our numbers in the first round. The victory of Jacques Chirac is a misleading victory acquired with a Soviet method using the ensemble of all the social, political, economic [and] media forces.”

The first-round bombshell by the National Front shook up one of the blandest presidential races in memory. The French had assumed that April 21 would produce a showdown between Chirac and Jospin, aging warhorses whose policies did not differ markedly. According to pollster Pierre Giacometti, it looked to be a personality duel between leaders representing two iconic sides of the French character: Jospin, the stern and cerebral “Cartesian”; and Chirac, the gregarious and roguish “Latin.”

But Le Pen trampled past the Socialists. He became France’s first far-right contender in a presidential runoff partly by moderating his famously thuggish style. He played down his shoving matches with rivals and crude comments such as his remark that the Holocaust was a “minor detail” of history.

Le Pen stood out among the campaign’s colorless political lifers and remote intellectuals who seemed physiologically incapable of talking bluntly about tough issues. He scored points with working-class voters worried about 9% unemployment, loss of economic control to globalizing forces such as the European Union, and the intertwined threats of rising lawlessness and the society’s difficulties in integrating North African immigrants.

Chirac won only 19% of the vote in the first round, the worst showing in French history by an incumbent. But he responded to the challenge with the dignity and determination that make him presidential in the eyes of many voters.

On Sunday, he reached out to the rivals--Socialists, Trotskyites and Greens--who helped him win despite their ideological distaste for him. His words and actions appeared to signal that he realizes the French have had it with politics-as-usual and want action, not just slogans.

Braving the cold and rain late Sunday, Chirac and his wife, Bernadette, made an unusual crowd-pleasing appearance in the Place de la Republique in front of soggy but jubilant partisans. Chirac’s second speech of the night was a kind of national pep talk. His breath steaming in the night, he congratulated the French for refusing “to cede to the temptation of intolerance and demagoguery.”