TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The far-right National Front made only limited gains in French local elections won by a wide margin on Sunday by ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives and their centrist allies.
Sarkozy's UMP and its allies will take over two thirds of the 102 local "departements", exit polls showed, up from 41 now, in a boost for the former president, whose recent comeback at the helm of the UMP is challenged within the party.
"The French people have massively rejected the policies of (President) Francois Hollande and his government," he told party supporters. "The time for change is now."
Hollande's Socialist party was set to lose half of the 61 departements it held before the election, exit polls showed.
The anti-immigrant National Front (FN) has seen 62 of its candidates elected, Interior Ministry data showed with 96 percent of the 4,108 local council seats accounted for.
That is quite a jump from holding just one currently. But it's less than 2 percent of the total and the FN will have too few in any one of the 102 "departements" to control any of them, updated exit polls showed.
Marine Le Pen's FN is banking on building a base of locally elected officials to be better placed to contest national ballots. But the party, which had won one in four votes in the first round last week, is struggling to transform its growing popularity into winning constituencies.
Initial exit polls had shown the FN, might win two departements, but the party conceded it had failed to do so. It said however the fact that it had won many seats would help spread its ideas.
REUTERS | INGRID MELANDER
