PARIS (AFP)---Extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and
centrist Francois Bayrou were knocked out of the French presidential race on Sunday after battling as feisty outsiders in a campaign that, for Le Pen, probably marks his last bid for the top post.
Voters chose instead to put rightwing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy and
Socialist Segolene Royal in the runoff for the second round of France’s presidential election on May 6.
|
Jews in France expressed a feeling of relief at Le Pen's steback in Sunday's first round of the presidential election. But they also welcomed the record turnout of voters - more than 80 percent.
CRIF, the umbrella group of secular French Jewish organisations, declined to make any comment on the result of the election. "CRIF didn't call to vote for one or another candidate. We traditionally do not comment the results," said Marc Knobel, a CRIF official.
"We do not give instructions for the 6 May runoff", Edith Lenczner, the organisation's spokeswoman, told EJP.
In 2002, CRIF gave the instruction to vote against Jean-Marie Le Pen who shocked France by reaching the secound round.
|
But with almost one in three voters backing Bayrou and Le Pen, the two frontrunners will be courting the electorate in the campaign for the runoff, re-adjusting their message in the hunt for new votes.
"I must have made an error in judgement," Le Pen commented shortly after unofficial projections were released, putting him in fourth place with about 10.2 to 12 percent of votes.
"I thought the French were unhappy," said the 78-year-old National Front leader."The French are very happy and the proof is that they have just re-elected -- my goodness, with a very comfortable lead and even a little more -- the parties that have been in power and who are responsible for the situation in France."
"I fear that this euphoria will not last long," he said in an interview to French television.
Le Pen, who shocked France and the world in 2002 when he won enough votes to stand in the runoff against Jacques Chirac, had repeatedly complained that Sarkozy was encroaching on his extreme-right territory with his tough stance on immigration and law and order.
According to a poll published in Libération daily newspaper, 23 percent of Le Pen's electors in 2002 voted this time for Sarkozy.
"It has mainly been the campaign by Nicolas Sarkozy that was fatal for Jean-Marie Le Pen", said Jean-Yves Camus, a political analyst and specialist on the extreme right wing.
The far-right leader said he would give instructions to his voters for the second round during a speech on May 1.
Waging his fifth and probably last campaign, Le Pen had expounded on his signature theme of halting immigration, which he said was the cause of France’s economic ills and posed a threat to its way of life.
A former Foreign Legionnaire who served as an intelligence officer in
Algeria and as a paratrooper in Indochina, Le Pen has been the champion of the far right for 35 years.
He has been accused of promoting xenophobia and anti-Semitism with his shock statements.
In 1987, he described Nazi gas chambers as a "detail" of history and in February, he dismissed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States as an "incident."