FRANCE: France's newly re-elected President, Mr Jacques Chirac, yesterday chose Mr Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a little-known senator and regional president, to be Prime Minister.
He will head the streamlined transitional government that will rule France at least until the second round of legislative elections on June 16th.
The plump and jovial Mr Raffarin (53) is more remarkable for what he is not than for what he is.
A former MEP and former minister for trade and small enterprises, he is not a member of the RPR Gaullist Party, founded by Mr Chirac, but a vice-president of the free market, centre-right party DL.
By choosing him, Mr Chirac wanted to show that he is unifying the centre right under the banner of the newly created Union for the Presidential Majority (UMP) before next month's poll. Mr Raffarin was a vocal advocate of the UMP.
Nor is Mr Raffarin an énarque, as graduates of the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration are known. The French mood is against elites and Mr Chirac hopes that Mr Raffarin's unpretentious style will win voters.
The new Prime Minister invented the phrase "la France d'en bas" - literally "France from below" - to describe the little people neglected by politicians.
In January, he published a book entitled New Governance. He founded a group of pro-Chirac senators called "Dialogue and Initiatives" and boasts that he "speaks Chirac fluently".
Mr Raffarin has been a Chirac ally since former prime minister Mr Edouard Balladur tried to wrest the centre-right from Mr Chirac's control in 1995. Unlike most of the men in Mr Chirac's inner circle, Mr Raffarin has the approval of the first lady, Mrs Bernadette Chirac.
In a signal that he intends to give top priority to security, Mr Raffarin made the director of the Gendarmerie his chief aide. He will announce the composition of his cabinet this morning.
Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, who had hoped to be prime minister, may head the finance ministry at Bercy.
Ms Michèle Alliot-Marie, the president of the RPR, which was sacrificed to establish the UMP, may become France's first female defence minister.
Ms Nicole Fontaine, who preceded Irish MEP Mr Pat Cox as president of the European Parliament, is favoured to head the ministry for European affairs.
The outgoing prime minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, submitted his resignation to Mr Chirac after a brief meeting at the Elysée yesterday morning.
The two men have been rivals for five years but having lost the presidential race, Mr Jospin announced that he was "going to disappear for a while".
His decision to leave political life is unusual in France, where politicians usually cling on despite financial scandals and electoral defeats.
Mr Jospin's last gesture before handing over power to Mr Raffarin yesterday was to return €2.5 million in "special funds" to the French treasury. The revelation that Mr Chirac spent €300,000 in "special funds" on personal plane tickets created a scandal two years ago.
French cabinet ministers traditionally kept what remained in their slush funds on leaving office, but Mr Jospin wanted to show he was a man of integrity. A poll yesterday showed that the centre-right would win legislative elections if they were held now.
The right has the advantage of having two leaders in Mr Chirac and Mr Raffarin, and a political programme. The left must explain why a return to "cohabitation" - which it always condemned - would suddenly be a good thing.
Mr Chirac continued to receive messages of congratulations on his landslide victory over the extreme right-wing leader Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Britain, the US, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Morocco and Egypt have all expressed relief, but Israel said it was alarming that the National Front received nearly one in five votes.
The Green leader, Mr Noel Mamère said that with National Front voters and abstentionists totalling nearly 40 per cent of the tally, French democracy could not be considered healthy.