PARIS: Voting got underway in France's overseas territories on Saturday in high-stakes snap parliamentary elections, which could change the country's trajectory and see the far-right party of Marine Le Pen take power in a historic first.
Residents of the tiny French archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, located off the coast of Canada, began casting their ballots in the first round of elections from 1000 GMT.
They will be followed by voters in France's islands in the Caribbean and the South American territory of French Guiana. Voting will later start in territories in the Pacific and then in the Indian Ocean before it gets underway on the mainland on Sunday.
Elections for the 577 seats in the lower house National Assembly are a two-round process. The shape of the new parliament will become clear after the second round a week later, on July 7.
Most polls show that National Rally is on course to win the largest number of seats in the National Assembly, parliament's lower house, although it remains unclear if the party will secure an outright majority.
A high turnout is predicted and final opinion polls have given the RN between 35 percent and 37 percent of the vote, against 27.5-29 percent for the left-wing New Popular Front alliance and 20-21 percent for President Emmanuel Macron's centrist camp.
If the RN obtains an absolute majority, party chief Jordan Bardella, Le Pen's 28-year-old protege with no governing experience, could become prime minister in a tense "cohabitation" with Macron.
On Monday, Macron plans to convene a government meeting to decide the further course of action, government sources said.
Macron's decision to call snap elections after the RN's victory in European Parliament elections this month stunned friends and foes and sparked uncertainty in Europe's second-biggest economy.
In an editorial, French daily Le Monde said it was time to mobilise against the far right.
"Yielding any power to it means nothing less than taking the risk of seeing everything that has been built and conquered over more than two and a half centuries gradually being undone," it said.
Wielding mops and buckets, several activists of the Femen feminist collective on Saturday demonstrated bare-breasted at the Trocadero in Paris. — AFP
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