French Choose Center-Right

French President Jacques Chirac's centre-right won a landslide parliamentary majority on Sunday, ending five years of left-wing control in the National Assembly, exit polls said.

Chirac's Union for the Presidential Majority, a coalition of rightist parties, captured between 360 and 378 seats, winning control of the 577-seat National Assembly, France's lawmaking body, exit polls showed.

The Socialist Party won between 153 and 165 seats. The extreme right National Front failed to win any seats.

Even Socialist Martine Aubry, a former minister and architect of the law that cut France's standard working week to 35 hours, lost her seat. Aubry, 51, implemented the law that cut the workweek to 35 hours from 39 when she was labour minister from 1997 to 2000 in the government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Her defeat could foreshadow moves within the Socialist party toward more centrist policies.

Control of the National Assembly goes to the party or coalition with an absolute majority of 289 seats.

Voter turnout was light throughout the day and appeared headed for a record low in France's 44-year-old Fifth Republic.

The swing toward the right in France was the latest tilt in that direction by voters across Europe. Conservative parties have also made gains in the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Portugal.

The Communists were in serious trouble, with party leader Robert Hue battling for his political life in a tough re-election battle for a seat from Val-d'Oise, north of Paris.

Three hours before polls close turnout was 46.7 percent — slightly worse than at the same time a week ago, when it was at 50.6 percent, the Interior Ministry reported. In the first round on June 9, turnout was about 65 percent, a record low for the first round of a legislative race under the Fifth Republic, established in 1958.

It was the fourth time in less than two months that the French have gone to the polls, including two rounds of the presidential race.

The head of Chirac's caretaker government, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, said after casting his ballot in the small western town of Chasseneuil-du-Poitou that he felt victory was ahead.

"The message from the French is clear: They want (their leaders) to take action," Raffarin said. "After this beautiful summer Sunday, it seems there's a lot of work waiting for me."

Raffarin, who would lose his job if the left won, confidently released his schedule for the coming week, including a commemoration for the late Gen. Charles de Gaulle and a meeting with Spain's prime minister.

The extreme-right National Front was running in 37 legislative districts but appeared to end up with no seats because only the candidate with the most votes wins in each district.

Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen complained that the system was stacked against smaller parties.

"We are the only country in which a party that arrived in second place in the presidential (race) and third place in the legislatives may have no deputies" in parliament, Le Pen said. The National Front currently has no seats in the legislature.

Le Pen finished second to Chirac in the May 5 presidential runoff.

In the outgoing parliament, leftists held 314 seats and rightists 245, while five deputies were unaligned. Thirteen seats were empty.