France's Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, lagging in the opinion polls, stepped up his assault on President Jacques Chirac today with four days to go to the first round of their presidential election contest.
Mr Jospin, a Socialist, seized on a general strike in Italy yesterday as an example of the sort of labour unrest he said could await France if the conservative Mr Chirac was elected to serve for five more years.
"If the outgoing president is returned, given what has happened in the past when he was in charge and given what is at the heart of his policies, I don't think we would get to 2007 without a crisis," Mr Jospin told Europe 1 radio.
Most recent opinion polls have shown Mr Jospin trailing Mr Chirac in Sunday's first round, when a record 16 candidates will vie for votes, and predict a narrow Chirac victory in a runoff between the top two contenders on May 5th.
A wave of big strikes hit France in late 1995, early in Mr Chirac's term, in an outpouring of protest against austerity policies pursued by the right-wing government of the day.
Mr Chirac dissolved the National Assembly in 1997 for a snap election calculated to return his conservative majority with renewed public support, but the gamble failed and Mr Jospin was elected at the head of a Socialist-led coalition.
"Let me remind you that the government he named stopped after two years, that he dissolved (the Assembly) and that we've been running the country since," Mr Jospin said.