Paris, March 21: France`s Conservative government may face a protest vote against economic reforms and high unemployment today in regional elections, possibly boosting the extreme right National Front. Pollsters say a record number of French people could decide not to vote at all in anger over Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin`s efforts to fill large budget holes with cutbacks in areas such as health care, research and education.
But with right and left running roughly equal in opinion polls,the Raffarin government`s economic policies of privatisation, deregulation and cost-cutting reforms look likely to stay.
An opinion poll in the daily Le Monde said 70 percent of those surveyed last week wanted to ``show their discontent`` with the government in the voting for regional assemblies.
After the Madrid bombings, terror threats in France, both from a shadowy Islamic group and blackmailers warning of an attack on the railways -- could also help the extreme right.
Raffarin says the vote has no national significance, but it does fall midway before presidential and parliamentary polls in 2007.
Bureau Report