French people urged to vote in local elections amid coronavirus lockdown
French voters were urged to turn out to vote in the first round of municipal elections, hours after a national shutdown of all non-essential shops and services.
Polling stations opened on Sunday as planned despite calls for the tworound vote to be postponed as the coronavirus spread.
On Saturday evening, the prime minister, Édouard Philippe, announced the country was moving into stage 3 of its response to the coronavirus emergency and ordered a partial lockdown, including the closure of cafés, bars, restaurants and cinemas.
Food shops, tobacconists, pharmacies and public transport will remain open, Philippe said, but transport ministers warned services would be reduced to a minimum this week to try to contain the spread of the virus.
French schools and colleges have shut down indefinitely and people are advised to work from home where possible and avoid unnecessary journeys.
The decision to shut down nonessential public places came as France reported 4,499 confirmed cases, including 91 deaths, according to the national health agency, Santé Publique France.
At polling stations, voters were advised to keep a “social distance” of one metre apart, to bring their own pens and to disinfect their hands before marking their voting paper. Priority was given to elderly and “vulnerable” voters.
At midday, participation was 18.38%, five percentage points lower than at the same point during the last municipal elections in 2014.
Philippe voted from Le Havre, where is standing for election as mayor. In Paris, the former president Nicolas Sarkozy and the current city mayor, Anne Hidalgo, were among the first to vote. President Emmanuel Macron was expected to vote in his home town at Le Touquet at lunchtime.
Anthony Wimbush, a British company director based in Paris, said his local polling station in east of Paris was quiet. “Everyone was keeping a metre apart and if you’d forgotten a pen, as I had, they were offering disinfected ones. I saw some people wearing gloves but didn’t see any masks,” he said.
At the local market, Wimbush said the food stalls were operating as normal, but police closed down a flower stall, considered non-essential. The normally busy Champs Élysées in Paris was deserted.
One of the most contested municipal battles is in Paris, where opinion polls showed the Socialist Hidalgo remains favourite, closely followed by the mainstream right candidate, Rachida Dati, with Agnès Buzyn, the candidate for the centrist government party, LREM, trailing in third place.
Elisabeth Borne, the transport minister, said long distance public transport services would be slowly phased out and that people should avoid all unnecessary journeys.
“Our absolute objective is to slow down the spread of the virus to enable the health services to deal with it in the best way possible,” Borne said.
Jean Baptiste Djebbari, the transport secretary, added that 80% of the Métro in Paris and 100% of buses and trams would run on Monday but services would be slowly reduced over the week. Seven out of 10 intercity and TGV services would run on Monday, reducing to half by the end of next week.
Djebbari called for “discipline and good civic behaviour”.
About 47.7 million people, including 330,000 citizens from other EU countries living in France, have the right to vote. Britons can no longer vote in France since the UK’s departure from the EU on 31 January.
Polling stations close at 8pm French time (7pm GMT). The second round of the elections is due to be held next Sunday.