French authorities have vowed prosecution and promised to monitor the internet to stop result predictions from Sunday's presidential vote leaking in the press or social networks before polls close.
(LtoR) France's incumbent president and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, France's socialist party (PS) candidate FranÁois Hollande, Front national (FN) far right party candidate Marine Le Pen
Supporters of France's Socialist Party (PS) candidate for the 2012 French presidential election Francois Hollande hold campaign posters in the city of Vitry-le-FranÁois
With traditionally accurate result predictions expected to leak before the end of voting at 8pm (6pm GMT), France's Polling Commission called on the media and internet users to show "responsibility and good citizenship".
But it also warned that any leakers would be prosecuted, with offenders facing fines of up to 75,000 euros ($100,000).
"If the prohibitions are not followed, the Polling Commission, jointly with the National Commission of Election Campaign Control, will refer the matter to Paris prosecutors," it said in a statement.
The commission said it would have about 10 staff monitoring media and the internet to detect leaks.
For more than 30 years, French voters have sat down in front of the radio or television after the last polling stations close to hear very accurate result predictions.
These are based on actual votes cast rather than the potentially troublesome exit polls used in many democracies.
The campaign officially ends at midnight Friday, with candidates barred from making public statements and no opinion polls allowed to be published, in order to prevent others' opinions or preliminary results swinging voters.
But polling organisations are authorised to be present when votes are counted after polling booths in the countryside and smaller towns close at 6:00pm. They then publish predictions that are embargoed for French media.
The results, available before 7:00pm, are historically accurate to within less than one percentage point and are released by French media, principally television channels.
While it would be illegal to publish the embargoed result predictions in France before 8:00pm, foreign media, notably francophone outlets in neighbouring Belgium and Switzerland, have no such compunction.
Add the speed of the internet to the equation, along with France's 23 million Facebook and three million Twitter accounts, and the law banning result predictions before 8:00pm appears increasingly unworkable.
Most major French media, including private and public television and radio channels and newspapers like Le Monde and Le Figaro, have said they will respect the embargo.
Some have warned they could break it, however, with the editor of left-leaning daily Liberation, Nicolas Demorand, saying the paper "reserves the right" to publish results on its website "if the gap (between lead candidates) is big and if the sources are reliable."
Polling organisations have also promised not to communicate predictions to foreign media that have announced an "intention to break French law", such as Belgium's francophone state broadcaster RTBF.
"We are working within a legal framework," said Yannick Carriou who heads the IPSOS polling organisation.
"If during the day on Sunday (before 8:00pm) you hear figures coming from IPSOS, they'll be false," he said.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has said he would not be stunned if the embargo were broken.
"Frankly this doesn't shock me, because the world has become a village," he said. "We have rules that sometimes are outdated, everybody knows it, it's a form of hypocrisy."
Front-runner Socialist Francois Hollande has been more hostile to the idea, saying those who break the law should be treated with "severity".
On French social networks, users were discussing a variety of ways of getting around the embargo, including renaming the candidates after countries and presenting the results as sports wins.
Some suggested renaming Hollande as The Netherlands and Sarkozy as Hungary, where his father was born.
No comments:
Write comments