Chirac's victory
Closing one of France's most dramatic presidential campaigns, conservative incumbent Jacques Chirac navigated to a second term in elections on Sunday. Until recently, not only the French people but also the whole world, was watching with the great concern how the French nearly presented their national saddle to the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Only on Sunday night did the French end the drama by refusing to give in to the temptation of intolerance and demagoguery, for which Le Pen is notoriously known. Provisional results gave Chirac 82.08 percent. Le Pen, head of the anti-immigration National Front (FN), won 17.92 percent -- only slightly above his first round score on April 21 which set off the political upheaval of the last two weeks.
Before a worldwide television audience, Chirac promised to use his victory to bring France together after the trauma of Le Pen's breakthrough. The victory followed two weeks of campaigns in which a nation was shocked by Le Pen's surprise first round triumph.
World leaders immediately breathed a collective sigh of relief. "The extremist, isolationist policies of Jean-Marie Le Pen have been rejected and crushed," said European Commission president Romano Prodi.
"Today the French people have once again demonstrated that their nation belongs to the heart of Europe," he said in a message congratulating Chirac on winning a second term in office. "The French people have rejected extremism without ambiguity," said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, while British Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was a "victory for democracy and a defeat for extremism."
Indeed the scale of Chirac's triumph was larger than expected and a record for French presidential elections.
Immediately hailed as a massive endorsement by the president's supporters, it also allowed the French left, which had urged supporters to vote for Chirac after the first-round defeat of Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, to claim victory as its own.
"France has rediscovered its colors, and the world has rediscovered France," said another Socialist Party leader. On Monday he was to accept the resignation of Jospin -- his prime minister since 1997 -- before appointing his own team to lead the right into the crucial legislative elections only five weeks away.
Chirac's re-election represents a remarkable victory for a man who has been the butt of criticism and ridicule after being named in a series of corruption scandals during his time as mayor of Paris.
Actually, the French and Chirac could never stomach Le Pen's or any of his men's ideas. Only this time did they realize the true danger of Le Pen's ideas, but just in the nick of time.
It was a dangerous game the French had played but we hope in the future the French would able to detect the danger before too long, meaning that they ostracize Le Pen and his followers from the national political forum.