France Prepares for Presidential Poll

PARIS -- The suspense surrounding France's first-round presidential voting Sunday is less over who will win, than over who will go down in humiliating defeat.


Polls predict a runoff May 7, since no candidate is expected to win more than 50 percent of the vote, and Jacques Chirac, the energetic conservative mayor of Paris, is considered certain to be one of the two candidates who will contest it. He is favored to emerge then as successor to Fran?ois Mitterrand, dying of cancer after 14 years as France's longest-serving president.


The election drama Sunday lies in the battle to avoid the embarrassment of missing the runoff. Assuming a Chirac triumph, either the patrician prime minister, Edouard Balladur, or the candidate of Mitterrand's once-powerful Socialist Party, Lionel Jospin, will be eliminated.


While Chirac took it easy Friday with plans for a radio interview but no rallies, Balladur and Jospin toured the country in a frantic search for last-minute support.


For Balladur, a member -- like Chirac -- of the Gaullist Rally for the Republic party, finishing third or worse would culminate one of the most spectacular collapses in modern French politics. Three months ago he led Chirac by 30 percentage points in some polls.


For Jospin, a former education minister, missing the runoff would brand him a symbol of Socialist failure. For a party which has held the presidency since 1981, an all-conservative runoff would be mortifying.


All three front-runners agree on many fundamental issues -- the need for France to retain its nuclear arsenal, the importance of closer European unity and a common European currency. Surveys suggest voters are irked by the similarities among the major candidates, and a third of the electorate was still undecided a week before the voting.


Campaigning, especially latterly, has been distinguished primarily by name-calling and a lack of substantive debate.


The mudslinging has been particularly vicious between Chirac and Balladur, longtime friends and onetime political allies.


When Chirac was prime minister from 1986-88 (his first term was 1974-76), he appointed Balladur finance minister. When the right won legislative elections two years ago, Chirac, as head of the RPR, picked Balladur as premier, declining the post himself so he could prepare in tranquility for his third presidential bid.


So for the Chirac camp, Balladur's decision to run for president was nothing less than treachery. Balladur recently labeled Chirac a "has-been," while Chirac called him a political "amateur."


Of minor parties, Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front, hopes to approach his best showing of 14.4 percent; he proposes expelling 3 million immigrants. Le Pen competes with Philippe de Villiers, a fierce nationalist running at about 6 percent. Jacques Cheminade, a maverick associate of American far-rightist Lyndon LaRouche, is said by opinion polls to have almost no support.


On the left, polls suggest 14 percent will back Communist Robert Hue or Trotskyite Arlette Laguiller. Dominique Voynet of the Green Party is seen winning about 3 percent. (AP, Reuters)