The Socialist leader could not bring himself to mention the name of Chirac. Lara Marlowe reports from Paris
Less than a week before the French presidential election, opposition to the extreme right-wing candidate Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen is tepid. Only 200,000 people participated in anti-Le Pen demonstrations nationwide on Saturday, far fewer than organisers had hoped for.
By comparison, more than one million people flocked to the Champs-Élysées when France won the World Cup in July 1998. Initial predictions that Mr Le Pen could get 20 per cent of the vote in the second round have risen to at least 30 per cent. Mainstream parties on the centre-right and left are still quarrelling.
The day after his first round defeat by Mr Le Pen, the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, said: "The choice is difficult. I don't want to weigh in one direction or the other".
After intense lobbying all last week, Mr Jospin finally issued a five-line statement by fax on Friday evening, in which he could not bring himself to mention President Jacques Chirac's name.
"Worried about the future of France and the foundations of our democracy," Mr Jospin wrote, "and although I am without illusions regarding the choice before our compatriots on May 5th, I ask them to express by their vote in the presidential election their rejection of the extreme right and the danger it represents for our country and for those who live here."
Had things been the other way around, Mr Chirac's entourage commented, he would have been more emphatic. Not only does Mr Chirac inspire revulsion among the socialists, they fear hurting their own chances in the June elections to the National Assembly if they help give the Gaullist leader the status of saviour of the nation.
Mr Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the former interior minister who won 5.39 per cent in the first round, has thrown his votes to Mr Chirac, but refuses to commit his tiny party to the "United Left" coalition the socialists and communists are trying to form for June.
The Trotskyist leader, Ms Arlette Laguiller, who won 5.82 per cent of the vote in the first round, refused to endorse Mr Chirac, saying the run-off was like having to choose between plague and cholera.
Two centre-right leaders, Mr Francois Bayrou of the UDF and Mr Alain Madelin of DL - who together won 10.71 per cent in the first round - want Mr Chirac to win the presidential poll, but refuse to join the Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP) which this week replaced the RPR as Mr Chirac's standard-bearer for the legislative elections.
"Wake up!" warned Mr Jean-Louis Borloo, a deputy in the National Assembly who deserted Mr Bayrou to join Mr Chirac's camp. "The ambitions of some, the disappointment of others, idiotic little calculations and fussing over party structures will give Le Pen 40 per cent next Sunday!"
In a poll conducted by Sofres and the M6 television station on April 26th, 42 per cent of 15-25 year-olds said Mr Le Pen's candidacy was "positive" because it would "shake up" French politicians. The domestic intelligence agency Renseignements Généraux (RG) reportedly attributes 70 per cent of the vote on May 5th to Mr Chirac, and 30 per cent to Mr Le Pen. But Mr Le Pen has risen "slowly but surely" since the first round, a high-ranking RG official told Libération. The RG predict an even higher abstention rate than the unprecedented 28.4 per cent in the first round.
A high abstention rate favours Mr Le Pen. The disarray in the "respectable" parties and Mr Le Pen's claim that street demonstrations demonise and victimise him may also strengthen his position.
"I have no criticism [of the demonstrations] on one condition: that they don't have the opposite effect of that desired," Mr Chirac said.
The European Commissioner for External Relations, Mr Chris Patten, said yesterday that Mr Le Pen's electoral success should serve as a "wake up call for all politicians".