'Defending the republic' in France

SAVIGNAC-DE-MIREMONT, France, May 7 (UPI) -- In the village hall of this tiny southwest France farming community, I was doing my municipal counselor duty as part of the team manning the polling booth on France's second election Sunday -- round two of France's presidential elections.

The first time round, ultra-right-wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen surprised many, though not all, by getting the second-largest number of votes nationwide. This put him through to the sudden-death runoff against the candidate who got the highest number, incumbent President Jacques Chirac.

Everyone had expected to see Chirac squaring off with Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in round two. But no. Le Pen squeezed past Jospin to oust him into political limbo; and the result was last Sunday's duel.

No one seriously expected Le Pen to enter the presidential palace. His first-round score of just under 18 percent was unlikely to increase by very much. All his supporters surely voted for him then and he could hardly hope to attract many more. His only hope, during a frenzied inter-round campaign, was to reassert his allegations that France's traditional political structure is inherently corrupt, inefficient and unworthy to govern the world's most civilized nation.

The argument fell on deaf ears -- predictably, because everyone else was on a campaign to "block Le Pen's path." Even Lionel Jospin's own Socialist Party called for voters to "see sense" and "defend the republic." After days of silence, Jospin himself emerged from the gloom in the same vein, although he could not quite utter the actual words, "vote Chirac."

"It really p***es me off to vote for Jacques Chirac!" thundered Gérard, a retired civil servant from northern France who came to settle in the village a few years ago.

While Le Pen had scored only some 18 percent in the first round, Chirac, at 19 point something, had done little better, while Jospin had trailed both at just over 17 percent. The three biggies had thus shared only a little more than half the electorate, with the remaining votes cast for 13 other presidential hopefuls.

The deafening "Défendez la République!" rallying cry had its effect. Chirac romped home on Sunday night with his predicted 80-plus percent, leaving Le Pen in the dust, his round-one score almost unchanged -- and France took to the streets in a delirium of rejoicing.

And the price for all this? Why, millions of voters felt they simply had to vote for a candidate whom, only weeks before, they had been widely slating as a corrupt, lying, perhaps even criminal, political beast -- the incumbent.

My neighbor Gérard certainly was not alone in his feelings. When he came marching into the voting room, his blood was obviously up, and we were soon to find out why.

A courteous man, he greeted us all by name and shook our hands in his usual jovial way. My job was to hand each voter a small blue envelope, while my neighbor at the table checked the electoral role and each voter's identity -- hardly necessary in a village where everyone knows everyone and there are only 92 voters, but nonetheless a required formality.

Actually, 93 names appear on our electoral roll, but old Jeannot died a couple of weeks ago and his name hasn't been struck off yet. As it happens, he died on the very day of round one. One moment he was adjusting his blue beret to its usual jaunty angle before sauntering down to the village to vote. The next he was stretched full-length on the kitchen floor, dead of a massive heart attack, no doubt before he knew what had hit him.

Grabbing a ballot marked "Jacques Chirac", Gérard declared, "I don't care who sees who I'm voting for -- here!" And he stuffed the Chirac slip into the blue envelope. Holding it above the slot in the transparent plexiglass box, he waited for me to press the button which rings a bell and opens the slot.

"Ting!" went the bell.

"A voté!" I announced, the mandatory cry meaning, "Has voted!" whenever a ballot paper goes into the box.

With a grimace, Gérard watched his envelope drop onto the pile that had been steadily mounting since eight in the morning.

"And now...!" he declared, his eyes scanning the table, "Where's the other one?"

Grabbing a fistful of bulletins marked "Jean-Marie Le Pen", he tore them into little bits before our eyes and threw the pieces into the trash can.

And as he marched out, his republican duty done, we looked at each other and knew just how he felt.