'Napoleonic' Raffarin to form new French Government

President Jacques Chirac yesterday ignored the clamour for a high-level scapegoat following calamitous election results at the weekend, and extended - for 100 days at least - Jean-Pierre Raffarin's term as Prime Minister.

But if the centre-right suffers another humiliating rejection by voters in the European Parliament elections in June, Chirac will probably dump Raffarin and try to make a new start.

The newspaper Le Monde said yesterday that a clear understanding, or "contract", to that effect existed between the two men.

One minister spoke of Raffarin's "100 days" - the period that Emperor Napoleon survived in power after his escape from Elba in 1815.

Raffarin, aged 55, bears a passing resemblance to the emperor, and the European elections could now be his battle of Waterloo (which also took place in June).

The immediate penalty for the rout of the centre-right in the regional elections will be paid instead by a handful of Cabinet ministers. Raffarin will announce a reshuffle today in which Finance Minister Francis Mer, Education Minister Luc Ferry and Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei are expected to be dismissed.

In the second round of regional elections on Sunday, the centre-left parties - themselves disavowed by voters just two years ago - captured 50 per cent of the nationwide vote and 25 out of 26 regions.

Although the elections have no direct bearing on the centre-right's large majority in the National Assembly, the vote amounted to a wholesale rejection of Raffarin's policy of moderate social and economic reform.

The Prime Minister offered his resignation yesterday. Chirac accepted it but immediately asked him to form a new Government - technically his third.

Whether this was an act of great courage on the President's part, or an act of cowardice, was the subject of intense debate yesterday. Some commentators suggested that Chirac was making it clear that the reforms - especially a tricky reform of the state healthcare system, which is €11 billion ($20 billion) in deficit this year - would continue.

Others said Chirac had baulked at making the obvious choice - replacing Raffarin with the rising star of the centre-right, hyperactive Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. If Sarkozy had succeeded in the job - and few have - he would have been perfectly placed to unseat Chirac as the dominant right-wing figure in French politics.

The 70-year-old President has not given up hope of winning a third term in 2007. Sarkozy, 49, has made it clear that a younger man - preferably himself - should be the standard-bearer for the centre-right in three years' time.

In what would be a characteristically Chiraquian stroke, there was talk last night that Sarkozy would be shifted to the Finance portfolio today and given the - now almost impossible - job of trying to balance the budget.

Centre-left politicians complained yesterday that re-appointing Raffarin was a slap in the face of voters who had protested against his income tax cuts (mostly benefiting the wealthy) and his reforms of the pensions and welfare systems.

Former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius said Chirac "has unfortunately turned a deaf ear to the clear message sent by the French people".

Apart from the health policy reforms, the most pressing task facing the "new" Government is to find ways of trimming a French state (which swallows 55 per per cent of GDP, including local government and state enterprises). The national accounts were 4 per cent of GDP in deficit last year and Paris has promised to respect the EU limits of 3 per cent by next year.

- INDEPENDENT