All eyes were on Jacques Chirac yesterday as the French waited to see whether their president would back a controversial youth jobs law despite massive protests or call for it to be modified or withdrawn.

The first step in the countdown was expected late on Thursday (local time) when the Constitutional Council was due to rule on the validity of the law, which Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has championed as a crucial tool to fight youth unemployment.

Chirac was expected to address the nation, possibly as early as Thursday evening local time, to signal whether he backed Villepin to the end or felt marches by millions across France in recent weeks meant the government would have to beat a retreat.

As politicians awaited a decision, protesting students blocked several major traffic routes around France, causing traffic jams totalling 345 kilometres around the country, officials reported. Train lines were blocked around Marseille and Rennes.

The president has supported Villepin so far. Continuing to do so would prolong the protests against the government, while backing away could trigger Villepin's resignation and a full-blown government crisis.

"Waiting for Chirac," read the headline in the daily La Croix. "He only has one shot and if he misses, I don't know where we're going," Le Figaro quoted a Chirac aide as saying. "There is no good solution, we have to pick the least bad."

The Constitutional Council could reject or validate the law, which has been passed by the National Assembly but not yet promulgated, or validate it with reservations. Chirac could promulgate it immediately if its passes muster.

"That would be a decision with serious consequences," said Bernard Thibault, head of the pro-Communist CGT union.

Student and trade unions, in a rare united front against the First Jobs Law (CPE), have called for a fresh one-day strike next Tuesday after between one and three million people marched two days ago to demand Villepin abandon the contract.

"It's as if they expect no change," the daily Liberation wrote. But soon, it added, "Chirac will have pronounced the most important words of the end of his term in office and we'll know if he has chosen the path of compromise or confrontation."

The unions have urged Chirac to use his constitutional powers to cut out the job measures from an equal opportunities law they were attached to and send the law back to parliament.

Source: China Daily