PARIS -- President Jacques Chirac, reacting to the far-right earthquake that has shaken French politics, is rushing to rally all the country's Conservatives into one large party to support him for the next five years, Reuters reported.

Chirac, now campaigning as the defender of democratic France against his anti-immigrant challenger Jean-Marie Le Pen, has this week gathered most Gaullist, centrist and liberal deputies in the national assembly into the new party.

Two prominent Chirac allies, Francois Bayrou and Alain Madelin, are holding out against a "president's party" they fear will drown their centrist or free-market views in a renamed Gaullist movement led by former prime minister Alain Juppe.

But with many of their National Assembly deputies abandoning them for Chirac, pressure was building on them to knuckle under and join the proposed "union for a presidential majority."

"We must stop the far-right on May 5 and on June 16 give Jacques Chirac a majority that measures up to this historic responsibility," Philippe Douste-Blazy, parliamentary leader of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), told the daily ***Le Figaro. ****

France votes on May 5 in a presidential runoff between Chirac and Le Pen, who outscored socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin on Sunday in a political upset that prompted left and right to try urgently to unite their respective camps.

The legislative elections due on June 9 and 16 have become the real focus of competition, since Chirac wants a right-wing majority to be able to govern effectively rather than being forced to share power with the left for another five years.