They would freeze the opinion-poll lead of the centre-right and benefit incumbent members of the National Assembly, four-fifths of whom are members of the governing coalition.But three weeks into the election, opinion polls are drifting towards the left It is the government’s campaign which seems most becalmed. Just down our street, there is a primary school which will be a polling station. One opinion poll last week reported that 51 per cent of the electorate had little or no interest in the election. The President chose to have the heart of the campaign carved up by long weekends, which would make it difficult for the opposition parties to build up any momentum, or consistently attract the attention of the French people.The President is a calculating man but he has a history of electoral miscalculations. All around the country, candidates report that their meetings are poorly attended; volunteers hard to come by. In one sense, the campaign is going exactly as he expected: nowhere. Or rather: it does not just so happen.President Jacques Chirac, it is widely believed, picked those dates deliberately.

The initial plan was to have the statutory two rounds of polling on 1 June and 8 June. (Anything familiar there?)It so happens that most of the campaign falls in the talk-to-me-later month of May, one of the worst possible times to call an election. May is, notoriously, a thankless time to conduct business in France. If your business is with the administration, and anything out of the routine, you might as well forget it until June.It so happens, however, that this particular month of May, the French nation is trying to conduct an important piece of business with itself.In the parliamentary elections on 25 May and 1 June, it must decide whether to continue with one of the least popular governments since polling began; or turn to the left. Wednesday was thrown in for good measure.Last week, with May Day falling on Thursday, Friday became a pont and there were three days of school Next week is normal. The following week, with Pentecost on the Tuesday and a pont on the Monday, school is down to three days again. Charlie cannot believe his luck: three half-term holidays in the same month.The same pattern is repeated throughout the civil service (which invented ponts) and much of business and industry, especially in the capital The provinces appear to work a little harder.

The ponts, it is maintained, regularise what would otherwise be a chaotic situation. Hundreds of thousands of people would take the bridging days off anyway.The result is that much of the country spends the month in a kind of twilight between work and leisure; barely recovered from one long weekend of traffic jams and relatives before it is time to dive into another. Black, the peripatetic school rabbit, has moved in with us for a five-day weekend There is a luxurious choice of parking places in the street

The newspaper kiosk on the corner is closed So, tragically, is the patisserie next door. It is, in short, Paris in the month of May.
August is the laziest month in France; but May is the oddest. The month is punctured by official 24-hour holidays – May Day, Ascension Day, Pentecost.It is further cluttered by ponts, which are like the Pont d’Avignon, bridges to nowhere: official and unofficial extra days of holiday, which join up the real holidays with the weekends.Thus this week there were only two days of school Thursday was a religious holiday (Ascension Day) Friday was a pont. But they were poles apart on how and when that should happen, and who should pick up the reins when he had gone.Since that meeting, Zairean government forces and the rebels have fought a fierce battle for the town of Kenge, 125 miles east of Kinshasa.

The rebels now control the town but 200 civilians and 100 government soldiers are said to have died. There are unconfirmed reports that Angolan Unita rebels and Angolan government troops took sides in the battle: Unita backing the Zairean government and Angolan government soldiers siding with the rebels. The Gabonese summit produced proposals for a transfer of presidential power to a parliamentary speaker to allow the country’s first democratic elections.Mr Mobutu, it was agreed, would not stand. There are suggestions the speaker, tipped to be the respected Catholic Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo, could then hand the presidency to Mr Kabila, saving Mr Mobutu the indignity of doing so directly.The international community’s main concern is for a peaceful transition, followed by speedy democratic elections. It is not certain, however, that Mr Kabila would see going to the polls as a priority.. The workmen next door to the office have stopped their ceaseless drilling The children rarely seem to go to school. The only thing both sides agreed on was that Mr Mobutu should go.

Last night Mr Mbeki changed plans to meet Mr Mobutu in Kinshasa and flew instead to the Gabonese capital, Libreville. There he will try to persuade the ailing dictator to attend a second meeting on the South African supply ship, the Outeniqua, moored off Pointe-Noire, Congo. He is carrying an invitation from President Nelson Mandela.Sunday’s meeting was more symbolic than substantial. He is willing to give diplomacy a chance, and our understanding is he will not proceed with the military campaign until after next week’s meeting.”Despite South Africa’s claims of rebel undertakings that the military campaign would be halted until the meeting took place, fighting continues. As on Sunday, when the first face-to-face talks between the Zairean President and the rebel leader ended, Mr Mbeki was optimistic about finding a diplomatic solution.
But yesterday the rebels, advancing on Kinshasa, continued to insist the only result they were interested in was Mr Mobutu’s resignation and a transfer of power to Mr Kabila.After a meeting in which he persuaded Mr Kabila to attend a second round of talks next week, Mr Mbeki said: “Mr Kabila says he is committed to peaceful resolution … He said the rebels would continue their military offensive on the capital until the 66-year-old dictator hands over power over to Mr Kabila.. President Mobutu Sese Seko failed to return home to Zaire yesterday after his three-day meeting in Gabon with Central African allies produced a peace plan which was rejected by the rebels seeking to topple him.