NICOLE SCHMID is President Jacques Chirac's nightmare. She isn't against him, just indifferent.
The 64 year old ophthalmologist is a self described Gaullist who voted for Mr Chirac in the 1995 presidential race. She still finds him sympathique, even if she says he lacks vision.
But Dr Schmid voted ecologist in the first round of yesterday's parliamentary elections, and she won't vote at all in next Sunday's run off because she would rather attend a seminar on astrology.
In what has been called France's most unpredictable election since Francois Mitterrand took the presidency in 1981, the political parties have failed to define the stakes clearly.
The contest remains a vague one between the centre right, espousing free market economics and the necessity of making sacrifices for EMU, and the left, which wants a more socially conscious welfare state.
French voters are disillusioned by their recent experience of both Socialist and centre right rule, especially the ever rising spiral of unemployment.
Dr Schmid personifies the dangers confronting the political establishment: the tendency to waste first round votes on "little" candidates with no chance of obtaining the 12.5 per cent required to reach the second round, a high abstention rate, and the disaffection of once loyal voters.
Many French voters saw yesterday's first round as a throwaway, a whimsical chance on a gloriously fair Mothering Sunday to send a signal of protest.
Voters often switch sides between the first and second rounds, making primary results hard to read.
"I vote ecologist in the first round because I'm for the protection of nature and animals," Dr Schmid explained. "I usually vote for the right in the runoff."
The ecologists don't have a chance of winning in her district, but appeals to "vote useful" did not impress her.
Dr Schmid would have voted for the centreright in the second round if it was not inconvenient to go home to her village. Her brother Christian's abstention was more serious, she said.
A computer engineer who always voted for the right, he is boycotting the poll because of the government's failure to improve the economy or reduce unemployment since Mr Chirac was elected in 1995.
"He's also annoyed with Chirac for dissolving parliament," Dr Schmid said.
"A lot of my friends are furious at him for doing it for his own convenience, just to have free rein for the next five years."
Mickaelle Hinanui Cauchois is the angry part of Mr Chirac's nightmare. Like millions of French people, the 21 year old Franco Tahitian art student was swayed by his rhetoric on the need to heal France's fracture sociale in 1995.
But yesterday she dropped a Socialist ballot into the box at the Pantheon polling station. "My generation is disgusted with politics," she said.
"The first time I ever voted it was for Chirac. He didn't keep his promises to help the poor and unemployed. For this government, money is god. And the nuclear tests: (in the south Pacific) upset me; I have relatives who work on Mururoa."
Yet Ms Cauchois voted Socialist without conviction: "They were in power for 14 years and it was catastrophic."
She almost voted ecologist, but her desire to block the extreme right wing National Front convinced her to "vote useful".
Up the hill, Mr Jean Tiberi, Mr Chirac's successor as mayor of Paris, a prominent member of the ruling Rally for the Republic (RPR) and one of 29 candidates for the Latin Quarter's seat in parliament, was leaving the polling station in a swarm of photographers.
"He's repugnant," Ms Cauchois said of Mr Tiberi. Shoppers in the nearby open air market in the Place Monge agreed, saying they voted only in hopes of throwing Mr Tiberi out of office.
He is under investigation in several financial scandals involving RPR financing, the cheap rental of luxurious city owned apartments to his family and friends, a lucrative make work contract awarded to his wife Xaviere and phoney voter registrations in his district.
Kim Campion, a 25 year old law student, didn't want to give the Socialists his support in the first round, but will probably vote for them in the second - without enthusiasm - to "balance" the National Assembly.
He liked the Socialists promise to abrogate the strict Pasqua and Debre immigration laws, but worried about the party's new tilt against Europe.
"If they just want to ease the Maastricht criteria, it's OK," he said. "But if they want to go further in braking integration, then I'm worried."
France Soir newspaper called this election campaign "the most awful, the most pathetic, the sorriest" that France has known.
In the month since President Chirac dissolved parliament, the centre right has failed to convince voters that it can bring about change. The left has tried to capitalise on public discontent, but without offering viable alternatives.
Meanwhile, the extreme right National Front waits in the wings.
