Candidates make final election campaign push

Paris: Families taking flats on sublet basis were given a grace period of two months to adjust their legal status with the Commercial Building Department, a senior official said.

Right wing former interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy has maintained a consistent lead in the opinion polls, but Socialist Segolene Royal has narrowed the gap over recent days.

After months of campaigning, a blackout on campaign speeches and opinion polls from last midnight will impose a "day of reflection" today before the polls.

Despite indications that as many as 40 per cent of voters had not finally made up their mind, all the surveys indicated that Sarkozy and Royal would contest a second round runoff on May 6.

Shock result

But after the shock of the last election in 2002, when veteran far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen knocked out the Socialist Lionel Jospin and came second behind sitting President Jacques Chirac, no-one is ruling out surprises.

"I call on all voters to come out massively in the first round," Royal told France Inter radio yesterday.

Chirac, the last political survivor of a generation formed by World War Two General Charles de Gaulle, is retiring after 12 years in power, and the poll favourites are all in their 50s.

The candidates held their last rallies on Thursday night, pledging to unite France behind them, Sarkozy borrowing from US civil rights leader Martin Luther King and Royal hosting Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

Memories

With memories of 2005 riots in poor suburbs still fresh and an unemployment rate the highest in the euro zone, jobs, crime and immigration have been the main concerns of the campaign.

But personality has been uppermost in many voters' minds and Sarkozy, in particular, has come under sustained attack from rivals who branded him as a dangerous authoritarian.

Sarkozy, a law-and-order hardliner and the most economically liberal of the candidates, won many admirers with his tough crackdown on the 2005 riots but his hyperactive character worries many voters.