France's Sarkozy targets parliament polls after win

By Staff
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PARIS, May 7 (Reuters) French president-elect Nicolas Sarkozy started plotting strategy today for a parliamentary election next month which is crucial to his ability to push through the sweeping reforms he has promised.

Sarkozy won a strong mandate for political and economic change by winning 53.06 per cent of the vote in Sunday's presidential run-off against 46.94 for Socialist Segolene Royal.

He also needs to secure a majority in the election for the National Assembly on June 10 and 17 to make good on his vows to loosen rigid labour laws, trim fat from the public service, cut taxes and restore full employment.

Sarkozy, 52, held talks with senior aides just hours after his election triumph although he plans to take a few days off to recharge his batteries after a hard-fought campaign.

''We are going to see how we can give him the biggest parliamentary majority possible so he can put into effect his undertakings,'' Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie told reporters outside Sarkozy's campaign headquarters.

''As he said again last night, he wants to carry out all the commitments he made during the campaign,'' she said.

Sporadic violence flared in a number of French cities after his decisive victory, but Sarkozy was conciliatory. He promised to be president of the entire nation and confound critics who call him a divisive, overly-authoritarian leader.

Most lawmakers from the small centrist UDF party have rallied to Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), but the hardline former interior minister also hopes to draw in left-wing figures to broaden the appeal of his reform drive.

''We have to organise this multipolar majority with the UMP, the UDF and then a left-wing pole,'' said Andre Santini, a leading centrist deputy and Sarkozy ally.

REFORM DELUGE A poll late yesterday late evening showed the UMP party ahead of the Socialists, with 34 per cent to their 29 percent. Analysts said the vote was likely to hand the new leader a clear majority.

Sarkozy, who starts his five-year term on May 16, is expected to appoint his campaign director, Francois Fillon, as prime minister and name women to half the posts in a compact cabinet of just 15 ministers.

''We have to act, the French people expect it. They have given him a real mandate -- it's not just an authorisation to implement his programme,'' Sarkozy's campaign chief of staff Claude Gueant told RTL radio.

Markets reacted calmly to the result. The CAC-40 share index opened up 0.1 per cent having already factored in a Sarkozy win, which French media said showed voters were hungry for change.

Sarkozy has promised a deluge of reforms in his first 100 days, including plans to undermine the 35-hour work week by cutting taxes on overtime, curbing union powers and tightening sentencing for repeat offenders.

''The French people ... have chosen to break with the ideas and habits of the past. I will thus rehabilitate work, authority, morality, respect, merit,'' said Sarkozy yesterday.

He also reached out in his first comments after the election to ''those who have been worn down by life'' and promised to be ''the president of all the French''.

Union leaders have denounced his proposals and France could face crippling strikes in the autumn of the sort that tripped Chirac when he took office in 1995 and tried to impose change.

The defeated Socialists face a period of bitter infighting after their third straight presidential defeat. Former Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn called her result a serious defeat and said he would be ready to reform the party.

Francois Hollande, the Socialist Party boss and Royal's partner, acknowledged mistakes had been made but warned the party against tearing itself apart.

''I'm not in favour of score-settling or looking backwards,'' he told Europe 1 radio, adding he would not tolerate clan warfare within the party.

Hollande said the party had to mobilise for the parliamentary polls and rebuild for the future by forging alliances with the far left and centrist supporters of third-placed Francois Bayrou.

REUTERS SYU BD1641

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