Centrist Bayrou emerges as French kingmaker
PARIS (Reuters) - Centrist Francois Bayrou has emerged as the potential kingmaker in France's presidential election after finishing third in the first round of voting.
Bayrou, 55, fell far short of securing a place in the run-off ballot on May 6 but won about 18 percent of votes in Sunday's first round.
The votes cast for him could determine the outcome of the decisive second round contest between Socialist Segolene Royal, and conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, and both are sure to court him and try to woo his voters.
A survey for pollsters CSA taken after the first round found 45 percent of Bayrou voters would support Royal in the second round, with 39 percent going to Sarkozy.
Bayrou, who portrays himself as a centrist alternative to the traditional left-right divide in French politics, is not yet saying whom he might urge his supporters to back on May 6.
"I'll start expressing myself on the second round from Wednesday," he said on Sunday evening.
But he signaled he intended to make the centre's influence felt on policy matters when Royal and Sarkozy start trying to win him over.
"I have good news for you: from tonight French politics is going to change and it will never be what it used to be...There is finally a centre in France," he told 1,000 supporters outside his Union for French Democracy party's headquarters in Paris.
"All decisions I have to make in the coming days, all stands we have to take, will be inspired by one conviction: a new policy is rising...and no one will stop it."
NO VOTING INSTRUTIONS
A devout Catholic and pro-European, Bayrou has always championed the centrist cause and in 1998 took over as president of the small UDF.
The group has traditionally been allied to the conservative mainstream and Bayrou served as education minister under three successive rightist governments between 1993-1997.
The UDF party has remained allied to outgoing President Jacques Chirac throughout his 12 years in power, but when Bayrou called a censure motion against the conservative government last year, he put an end to the alliance.
In the presidential election campaign he shifted his party further left to draw support from Socialists who doubted the competence of their candidate, Segolene Royal.
But his room for maneuver could be limited because the UDF may have to rely on a longstanding alliance with Sarkozy's ruling Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party to retain its seats in parliament in an election in June.
Supporters said they hoped Bayrou would resist all calls from the Socialist party and the UMP.
"I hope he will refrain from giving voting instructions. He has spent to much time criticizing both camps. It would hardly be credible if he followed one of the two," Maxime Cointe, a young UDF activist, said.
"It would be a pity, for him and for the future of his camp," said another, Bertrand Ledrappier.
Bayrou's advisors say he will take time to decide whether to back one camp or the other, or to back neither.
"We'll listen this week to how the program may shift, or take shape," said UDF European deputy Jean-Marie Cavada.
(Additional reporting by Danielle Rouquie)
