The first round of the French presidential election is a national carnival that seldom disappoints. If Sunday’s vote follows the opinion polls, only President Nicolas Sarkozy with 28 per cent of the vote and his Socialist party opponent François Hollande (a predicted 27 per cent) will remain in the ring. The country will then be faced with the real choice of who is to run France for the next five years, but the elimination of the eight outsiders will have taken most of the high spirits out of the campaign.
The first round is the roll call of true believers. Three of the current candidates are Trotskyists (or ex-Trotskyists) and four have never scored more than 1.5 per cent in the opinion polls. But until the eve of the election, according to the rules, all must be granted the same level of attention and national airtime.
They include Eva Joly, who started her life in France as a Norwegian au pair and then developed into a ferocious anti-corruption examining magistrate.
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