
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 29, 1993                   TAG: 9303290043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PARIS                                LENGTH: Medium

CONSERVATIVES FINISH OFF SOCIALISTS IN FRENCH VOTE

Conservatives routed President Francois Mitterrand's Socialists in runoff elections Sunday, capturing 80 percent of the parliament's seats in a rout that promises Rocard significant policy shifts.

The most notable Conservative victim was Michel Rocard, a former premier and the top Socialist candidate to succeed Mitterrand in 1995. He lost to a little-known mayor.

Voters also handed a surprise defeat to Jean Marie Le Pen's extreme right National Front, which had been expected to capture two seats.

With all but eight districts decided by midnight, the rightist alliance led by Mayor Jacques Chirac of Paris and former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing won 458 seats in the 577-member National Assembly. Other rightist parties took 22, Socialists 53, Socialist allies 13, and Communists 23, the Interior Ministry reported.

The Socialists, in power 10 of the past 12 years, were reduced from 273 seats - parliament's largest bloc - to a token opposition.

The backlash against Mitterrand's party was led by voters fed up with 10.5 percent unemployment and a string of political scandals.

The vote put conservatives in a strong position to win presidential elections in two years when Mitterrand's term ends. Before then, the conservative gains should bring changes including accelerated privatization and tougher immigration rules.

The election also foreshadows an uneasy period of divided rule between Mitterrand and a hostile parliament for the rest of the president's tenure.

The big winner was Chirac, whose conservative Rally for the Republic became the biggest party in the assembly, with a 25-seat lead over Giscard's center-right Union for French Democracy.

That margin gives front-runner Chirac an edge over Giscard in their contest to represent the right in the 1995 presidential campaign. It also puts his party out front to win the prime minister's job, when Mitterrand makes the appointment.

Prime Minister Pierre Beregovoy, who said he would resign Monday, met after midnight with the president. Mitterrand is expected to name Beregovoy's successor before the assembly is seated Friday.

by CNB