ZGram - 5/6/2002 - "All eyes are on France..."

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

May 6, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

More heartening news on the rise of Le Pen in the polls and, hopefully, in t=
he
upcoming general election:

[START]

National Front poised to become country's second biggest party
Buoyed by results, leader plots revenge in general election

Paul Webster in Paris
Monday May 6, 2002
The Guardian

Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has accused Jacques Chirac of engineering a "giant
electoral fraud", was last night in a position to wreak revenge in next
month's general elections after scoring the National Front's highest-ever
vote in any national poll. The record score of nearly six million votes was
achieved despite what Mr Le Pen called the incumbent president's "Soviet
methods" which united the media and leftwing parties "in the service of a
super liar".

"I look forward to the general elections with plenty of confidence," he
added, in a note of optimism supported by the steady growth of the National
=46ront's popularity during a long-running law and order debate, linking
street crime to the five million immigrant population.

Unless the left can recover quickly from the first-round defeats, the
National Front has a strong chance of becoming the second biggest party in
the national assembly. The two-round electoral system is designed to favour
moderate rightwing parties and work against marginal groups but the far
right has never gone into a poll with so many voters behind it.

Wrecking Mr Chirac's career has been a prime motive for Mr Le Pen during
the rise and fall of his fortunes over the past 28 years since he first
stood for the presidency. Throughout this campaign, he persisted in
accusing his personal enemy of corruption, cheating and lying.

After yesterday's polling, he indicated that Mr Chirac would continue to be
his electoral target when he said that he doubted whether many of those who
voted for the president would support his Gaullist RPR party on June 9 and 1=
6.

In 1997, when Gaullists lost control of the national assembly to the
Socialist coalition, the leftwing victory was due largely to spoiling
tactics by the racist movement. At the time, only 3.8 million voters
supported the National Front, which won a single seat. But yesterday, Mr Le
Pen's first-round backing of 4.8 million electors not only turned out again
but were joined by hundreds of thousands of more people approving his
anti-immigration, Eurosceptic, anti-abortion and pro-capital punishment
platform.

Early returns suggested that he had more than the total extreme right's
first-round vote when he was opposed by his former deputy, Bruno M=E9gret,
who set up a breakaway movement.

Although in percentage terms the result was a disappointment for the
extremist leader who had been predicting 30% in his favour, the overall
numbers confirmed his place as the leader of France's second most
influential party at a time when Socialists and Communists are in disarray.

Mr Le Pen threatened to challenge the presidential result in the courts
after complaining of a conspiracy led by Mr Chirac. He has promised to
fight every one of the 577 national assembly seats and has refused a
second-round agreement with moderate rightwing parties to withdraw his
contenders in the second round even if they have no chance of winning.

As a result, the National Front has the best opportunity of winning a
significant number of seats since 1986, when the Socialist president,
=46ran=E7ois Mitterrand, introduced proportional representation and agreed t=
o
the NF receiving the same state television treatment as traditional
parties. The left still lost but Mr Le Pen's movement won 2.3 million votes
and 35 seats.

Mr Chirac, as prime minister, returned to the two-round voting system,
which favoured the moderate right for the 1988 general elections. The
extremist movement lost all but one constituency despite a 400,000 increase
in its electorate. The lone National Front MP, Yann Piat, quit the party
and was murdered soon afterwards.

With 3.9 million votes in 1997, the racist group still won only a single
seat but by maintaining candidates in constituencies that should have gone
to Gaullists and centrists, Mr Le Pen's movement split the rightwing
electorate and helped Communists, Socialists and Greens to pull off a
massive unexpected victory.

This time round, the Communists are on the verge of parliamentary
extinction after their candidate, Robert Hue, was eliminated with only 3.3%
on 21 April. The party, once France's biggest, lost much of its working
class electorate to the National Front. The Socialists, the other rampart
against the racist movement, are leaderless. The prime minister, Lionel
Jospin, retired from politics after being ousted in the first round.

<end>

A small PS:  I just was told that France has to thank Lionel Jospin, aJew, f=
or
all the freedom-of-speech destroying Holocaust Laws.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Source:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,710777,00.html

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

"Not only is the Devil running out of steam, he's running out of fools."

Ernst Z=FCndel