By KUNA
Paris : French and European Union (EU) resident voters head to the polls Sunday for the second round of voting in France’s municipal elections to select mayors and city and town councilors throughout the country.
In a first round of voting held on March ninth, all but 32 percent of municipalities with populations of over 30,000 people chose their town councils, which subsequently elect the mayors.
But some major cities, like Paris, the capital, and Marseille, in the south of the country, the second largest French city, have still to decide the final results and 67,000 candidates are still in the running for the remaining positions..
Close to 50 million voters are entitled to cast ballots in the municipal elections and this includes 44.5 million French and several million European Union residents here.
In remaining contests, the Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, is widely expected to win the day Sunday, with a rainbow coalition of Socialists, Greens and other leftists against Francoise de Panafieu, the preferred choice of the UMP party of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Voter turnout Sunday will be important in many of the undecided races, and turnout last Sunday was low at just over 66.5 percent.
As campaigning closed Friday night, calls were heard for the undecided and disaffected voters to go to the ballot boxes, but this may not take place as many seats already look like they are decided.
The Socialist opposition candidates looked almost certain to continue their good showing in the local elections, which they say is a sanction of the policies of President Sarkozy and his government.
Nevertheless, about half of the government ministers in the cabinet of Prime Minister Francois Fillon, have already been selected for town councilor positions or mayoral posts, including Fillon himself.
The remainder are running in Sunday’s race supported by the Prime Minister and the UMP apparatus.
Big losers in this campaign, however, appear to be some Sarkozy aides and marginal parties, as well as Francois Bayrou’s centrist “Modem” party, which has made alliances with all sorts of political formations, be it on the left or the right, and even with the more extreme communists.
Bayrou, who got 18.7 percent in the Presidential election last May, is now credited with only single digit support and while much less significant, is seeking to play a broker role in some seats.
Among Sarkozy supporters, his own spokesman David Martinon has emerged as a big loser in the suburban Neuilly district outside of Paris, where Sarkozy, himself, was a long-time mayor.
Martinon was highly unpopular after he was “parachuted” into Neuilly by the President and he was rejected both by residents and the local party apparatus despite the initial support of the President’s son, Jean.
Martinon was forced to withdraw just weeks ahead of the voting and sources say he has now been sent as Consul to New York, thus ending this attempt at a political career.