Word: pens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...preceded by an eerie silence punctuated only by the hiss of thousands drawing a breath in anticipation. But the screaming outside the French Socialist Party headquarters on the Rue Solferino weren't the expressions of horror and despair heard five years earlier, when the right-wing Jean-Marie Le Pen beat then Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin into the runoff against President Jacques Chirac. This time, the Socialist faithful were yelling out of joy and relief that it was their candidate, Segolene Royal, who would be facing off against conservative rival Nicolas Sarkozy in the May 6 runoff...
...strong, 18.5% showing by Francois Bayrou of the Union for French Democracy party casts the centrist in the role of possible kingmaker going into the second round. The weight of the Bayrou vote was further enhanced by the electoral whipping of extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who in France's last presidential race in 2002 shocked the nation by making it into the final against incumbent President Jacques Chirac with nearly 18%. This time around, the huge turnout limited the National Front leader to just 11%. The key to the outcome of the runoff will be whom Bayrou...
...Royal ending in a 50-50% tie. Meanwhile, Sarkozy - who built his hard-line, law-and-order reputation as France's Interior Minister - has sparked outrage among rivals and even consternation among his backers by embracing crime-fighting policies and immigration proposals that some critics have likened to Le Pen's xenophobia. His electoral pledge to create a new "ministry of immigration and national identity," critics claim, was an attempt to imply foreigners are a threat to Frenchness and was aimed at luring Le Pen voters...
...hard- and extreme-right voters, but he'll pay for that in the second round," predicts Pierre Moscovici, a Socialist Party heavyweight and vice-president of the European Parliament. While mainstream conservatives backing Sarkozy's tax-cutting, market-friendly economic polices may overlook his repeated pledges to help Le Pen voters "out of their ghetto" and into his camp, Moscovici warns that the hard-right lean will repel most people who supported Bayrou. "Sarkozy reminds me of Berlusconi," Moscovici comments. "The Italian right forgave him every excess, the Italian center fled...
...curmudgeonly 79-year-old Le Pen, however, still appears to attract the bulk of the anti-immigration vote, running fourth with 14% of the vote (five points behind Bayrou). He can't win, of course, but his persistent appeal shows that for part of the French electorate, the most utile vote remains one that declares a pox on the French political class as a whole...