Giscard and Mitterrand in neck-and-neck run-off

Press, 28 April 1981, Page 8

Giscard and Mitterrand in neck-and-neck run-off

NZPA-Reuter Paris President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and the Socialist Francois Mitterrand yesterday emerged clear firstround victors in France’s presidential election, and will face each other in a runoff on Sunday week to decide who rules the country for the next seven years. But the outcome of the polling last Sunday suggested that the result of the second round on May 10 would be very close. The President and Mr Mitterrand. who both pronounced themselves pleased with their performance, were several percentage points ahead of their nearest rivals — the neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac and the Communist Georges Marchais. The Ministry of the Interior, which organises elections in France, said almost complete returns gave the 55-year-old Mr Giscard just under 7.7 million votes, or 27.97 per cent, and Mr Mitterrand almost 7.2 million, or 26.14 per cent. Mr Chirac, Mayor of Paris for the past three years, had 17.96 per cent with 4.94 million votes and Mr Marchais

4.2 million votes, or 15.32 per cent. ; The ballotting in two weeks’ time will be a re-run of the 1974 elections when Mr Giscard won his first seven-year term through defeating Mr Mitterrand by less than half a million of the 27 million votes cast. In 1974, Mr Mitterrand, now making his third bid for the French presidency, which has become in internal terms the most powerful post of its type in the Western world, was supported by the Communist Party from the start. But the “union of the Left” then existing between the two parties broke up in acrimony in 1978 and relations between them have since been bitter. Mr Giscard said he was happy with his result in Sunday's voting although about seven million people or around 18 per cent of the electorate stayed away. In 1974, only 15 per cent failed to vote in the first round. Support for the President in an electorate swollen by his lowering of the voting age from 21 to 18 dropped by 4 per cent from his firstround showing in 1974 when he had 32.6 per cent.

The result on May 10 could well depend on the distribution of the just over one million votes cast for the ecologist Brice Lalonde, fifth in the polling ahead of two Right-wing outsiders and three Leftists, Of the Leftists, the radical Michel Crepeau and the Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller, who together took 1.2 million votes, both said yesterday they would ask their supporters to back Mr Mitterrand in the second round. But Mr Marchais, whose poor showing was the main surprise of the first round, declined to say how he would instruct his party faithful. The Communist leadership would meet today to decide their attitude, he said. The relatively low Communist poll, the party's worst electoral result since World War Two, could come as a boon for Mr Mitterrand in ■ his drive to win over Centrist voters, French political analysts said. Mr Giscard and Mr Chirac had argued strongly in the last days of the campaign that as President the 64-year-old Mr Mitterrand would be an effective captive of the Communists and

would be compelled to bring them into any Government: he formed. ! j Mr Marchais had called obi Communist voters, ally some 20 per cent'of the, electorate, to give him heavy I support as the best fray to’ ensure that they h shared] power with the Socialists and! prevented Mr iMitterfand from seeking allies to theRight. “Marchais can hardly: refuse to tell his people to vote for Mitterrand because if he did he would be seen publicly to be wrecking any chance of the Left coming to power.” one French political! scientist said. "But he is now in no position to demand Cabinet, seats as the price for hisj support, and that will take] much of the sting out of thej President's argument that Mitterrand could only rule ■ with \the“ communists,” the| political scientist 'added. j Mr Chirac, the 48-year-old, former Prime Minister who campaigned as the true heir of the late President Charles de Gaulle, declined to say whether he would swing his vote behind Mr Giscard.