French Elections -- Tomorrow! (Sunday)

The French campaigns for President, held every seven years, came to a close yesterday and everything goes on the line tomorrow, Sunday. It's a twelve-horse race (yes, twelve candidates!) and the top two vote-getters go into a run-off two weeks later, unless one single candidate gets a majority of the vote in the first round.

In the last election, Chirac and far-right candidate LePen made it through to the second round, with LePen edging out the highly-favored Socialist candidate Jospin. This time, there are three candidates out in front -- Sarkozy, Royal, Bayrou -- and LePen waiting in the wings.

No one knows who's going to come out on top, with so many voters undecided these few days before the election.

As in Japan, campaign posters are posted on assigned signboards in each quarter, assigned equally to each candidate. None of the signposts along the highway that you see in the U.S.: like Japan, this election assures equal space and opportunity to each candidate, so long as they gather 500 signatures for their candidacy.

The photos I've included here are of the candidates whose posters have not been defaced. Others like LePen and even Sarkozy (who criticized immigrants in the suburbs of Paris two years ago during the riots) have had their posters defaced or torn down by angry citizens during the dead of night ... I say that because I imagine, just as anywhere else in the world, tearing down political posters is probably a punishable offence ...

Can't wait for the result and the next stage of the campaign ...!

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(***DISCLAIMER: This is not an endorsement of any of these campaigns ... just recording what I saw ...)