Le Pen

French elections – more bad news than good?

First the good news. The Right is not only out of the Elysee Palace but it is on course to have lost control of parliament too. And in its place is probably the most progressive of social democrat parties in Europe today. The Socialists’ programme includes boosting industrial investment, youth employment and teacher numbers, hiking taxes on the rich, and partially reversing former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s regressive pension reforms. Francois Hollande’s election as President has already shifted the tone in Europe away from austerity and towards growth, although, with a commitment to balance the budget, it is very difficult to see how  this left turn can result into any sustained change of direction.

Which takes us to the first bit of bad news. The socialists, and their close allies, the PRG and Greens are heading for an outright parliamentary majority. And this means they won’t have to rely on the Left Front to pass laws. It was competition in the Presidential election with this alliance of communists and other radical left-wingers that radicalised the Socialists’ programme and requiring Left Front support in parliament would have helped push the Socialists to carry through their more progressive promises and go further – in particular curtailing the power banks and corporations, confronting the privileges and distributing the wealth of 1%, and tackling the anti-democratic slide and austerity policies of today’s Europe.

At one point credited with an 18% score in opinion polls, putting him in third place behind Hollande and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy of the right wing UMP party, the Left Front’s Jean Luc Melenchon ended the Presidential race with a disappointing, although nevertheless impressive 11%. On Sunday, the Front de Gauche achieved just 6.9%, and Melenchon himself was knocked out of a race in the former left-wing heartlands of Pas de Calais in the north of the country by extreme right leader Marine Le Pen. She will now be pitted in next Sunday’s second round run off against a socialist candidate who beat Melenchon to  place.

To be sure, the Left Front made progress on 2007, if you compare its vote with the alliance’s component parts. And if the vote had been under proportional system this would have secured the party 40 MPs. Under the first past the post system, though, the distribution of the vote means the party risks being left with just 9-11 MPs. (A reverse compared to the French Communist Party’s 15 MPs in the last parliament, despite garnering 700,000 additional votes bringing the total to 1.8 million).

The reasons for the poor result will be chewed over in the coming days and weeks, but here are some of the possible factors:

• at a local level Melenchon had hoped to turn his battle with far right leader into the focus of a national Front-Front contest over the working class vote, but was instead successfully portrayed as an outsider parachuted into Le Pen’s home town, as well as possibly falling foul of dirty campaign tactics by the extreme right leader;
• the decision to lighten the punches the Left Front had laid on the Socialists in the Presidential election (note that the other radical left parties, Workers’ Struggle and Revolutionary Communist League which together garnered 880,000 votes in 2007 saw their support fall to 255,000 on Sunday);
• Hollande’s campaign commitment to tax top earners, and, after his election, moves to return to retirement at 60 for millions of people and the hint at possible penalties for companies that fire workers or relocate production abroad, policies that borrowed heavily from the Left Front’s manifesto, but which may well have take the wind out of the latter’s sails;
• and finally, the logic of the first past the post system that favours the two biggest opposing parties.

Now to the other big piece of bad news:  the results of the far right Front National, which not only scored a symbolic win over the radical left’s charismatic leader Melenchon but scored highly in about 60 other constituencies across the country. At 13%, it garnered less support than leader Marine Le Pen achieved in the Presidential election – an historic high of 18% -  but nevertheless this result confirms the rise of  the Front National as the country’s third party.

The Front National, which fused its campaign of hate with a strong anti-European message and appeal to the working class vote, hopes to win its first parliamentary seat for nearly 26 years, although is expected to win fewer than three constituencies. Damage limitation could have been achieved by a deal, sought by the Socialists whereby the main two parties pledged co-operate in backing any candidate that would defeat the Front National in next Sunday’s run-offs. This was the case in the 2002 election in which the mainstream right’s Jacques Chirac faced Marine’s father Jean Marie Le Pen in the second round Presidential poll. But the UMP, which has swung sharply to the right under Sarkozy, is rejecting this, and is openly appealing for Front National votes.

Finally, to the last bit of bad news. Turnout at the election reached a new low – 39.5% compared to 42.7% in 2007. This indicates a real disaffection with the democratic system at a time when unemployment is soaring (22.5% for the youth) and incomes severely squeezed. In the 1980s the socialist-led Left government  was elected on a radical programme only to abandon it for austerity, and the result was a lurch forward of the Front National. If the Left, with already a much less ambitious plan than in 1981, fails people’s hopes again, the risk is that Le Pen could be in sight of national power.

Le Pen senior pays hommage to dictator Pinochet

France’s godfather of the far right Jean Marie Le Pen paid hommage to the dictator Augusto Pinochet in a ‘private visit’ to Chile this weekend. The former President and now honorary chairman of the Front National was among a number of fascist and extreme right-wingers from the US, Spain, Argentina and France who were invited to the showing of new documentary that seeks to rehabilitate the General who ruled the south American country with an iron fist between 1973 and 1981 after overthrowing the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende.  Jean Marie apparently stood in for his daughter, Marine Le Pen who has taken over from him as head of the Front National and is standing in parliamentary elections Sunday in a the Pas-de-Calais constituency in the north of the country. Anti-fascists protested Saturday in Paris against Le Pen. Sources http://noticias.terra.cl: Pensee Libre

The Six Lessons from France’s French Presidential election

The Six Lessons of the 6th of May: L’Humanite newspaper on the Second Round of the French Presidential election here

France needs genuine policy change and concrete, rapid improvements in living standards or Le Pen will triumph

IN THE RADICAL PRESS / HUMANITE

May 7, 2012

Following the victory of Socialist Francois Hollande over right-wing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round of France’s Presidential elections on Sunday, French communist daily L’Humanite caught up with Olivier Dartigolles, spokesman for the French Communist Party, which is a founding and central member of the Left Front, to discuss the objectives of the radical coalition ahead of next month’s legislative elections

L’Humanite: The victory of the Left was widely celebrated at a gathering at the Bastille, including by supporters of the Left Front. What is your initial take on this result?

Olivier Dartigolles: It was a very great relief. After five years of Sarkozyism and 10 years of the Right, it was essential that the dynamics of the Left, of bringing people together, was able to end what was certainly one of the worst periods in terms of tainting our values and brutalizing the living conditions of large sections of society.

Last night, there were two feelings. Of course, the satisfaction, the joy, of having created the political conditions for a defeat Sarkozy, but also gravity. Because today the Left has a great responsibility, and no doubt faces even greater challenges ahead at a European level, during a time of intense political recomposition and of ideological battles. The Left Front has played a key role and made an essential contribution to the election of Francois Hollande. Yesterday was a milestone…but after winning [the Presidential election], the Left must absolutely succeed [in the coming parliamentary poll].

L’Humanite: Nicolas Sarkozy was defeated yesterday; how do you interpret the sanction of the ballot box?

Olivier Dartigolles: Our country was exhausted. We had to get rid of him. Last night, there was a “whew” of relief because a majority of our people understood what a second five year term of Sarkozy would have meant, with the direction taken by his campaign between the two rounds. The dikes have completely broken between [Sarkozy’s] UMP and the Front Natonal. This extreme rightward shift is not a momentary electoral positioning. The right wants to use the crisis and its consequences to settle its accounts with the social model, with the collective guarantees and values that have endured since the Liberation. The Right’s political landscape is also disturbing. Tension is palpable in the French people who feel that, if this change in the political majority is not accompanied by a genuine change in policy and real, concrete and rapid improvements in living standards, the next time, the Right will have Le Pen in its armoury.

L’Humanite: What challenges lie ahead for the left?

Olivier Dartigolles: A page has been turned and a new chapter starts. The expectations of a Left that meets the challenges of the era in a historically new context are written in capital letters. The Left has a pressing need to make a policy change that responds to popular concerns. The coming weeks will determine whether the Left manages to draw lessons from past failures and today’s hopes.

L’Humanite: What is at stake for the Left Front in the coming legislative elections?

Olivier Dartigolles: The challenge is clear: get a left-wing majority in the Assembly and ensure that the momentum of our campaign continues in the coming weeks so that we get the number of Left Front deputies elected that can clearly influence the policies of this new majority and the solutions to end the crisis. Our priorities are those that were the burning issues of the electorate of [Left Front Presidential candidate] Jean-Luc Melenchon: wages, employment, purchasing power, health, education, public services, rejection of generalized austerity at a European level, obtaining new rights, new social and democratic gains for citizens… and employees in their workplaces. There is a desire for the Left in our country. We need to break down the barriers that prevent these policies being implemented.  In the coming days, we must explain how voting for the Left Front will be ‘useful’ for the whole Left and also for real policy change. The social emergency requires a Left majority in the National Assembly to pass laws that allow us to tackle it, and there should be no hesitation in repealing Sarkozy’s laws that have done the most harm. So, we have much work.

Original article in French

Translation by Revolting Europe

Pressure builds on Sarkozy as he ‘crosses red line’ on Le Pen

Humanite newspaper

A high profile anti-racist campaign group has ‘decided to call for a vote against Nicolas Sarkozy in the second round of the Presidential election.’

SOS Racism stated Wednesday that ‘in declaring that Le Pen is compatible with the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy has crossed a line that no President of the Republic or any republican candidate in a Presidential election has crossed.’

Sarkozy’s first round campaign was marked by an unprecedented swing to the far right for a mainstream right-wing candidate with strong attacks on immigrants as he tried but failed to win over Marine Le Pen’s far right backers. Some argue that the incumbent’s bid to steal Le Pen’s clothes simply legitimised her abhorrent views and so boosted her vote, and she achieved a record 18% for the Front National.

Now he is stepping up this far-right-ward lurch following Sunday’s result that saw him come second with 27.8%  of the vote against Socialist candidate Francois Hollande’s 28.6%. In the May 6 runoff Hollande is currently predicted to win by a margin of 10 points.

On Tuesday, Sarkozy told supporters in Longjumeau, a suburb in the south of Paris, that voters who had turned to Marine Le Pen had done so legitimately and that the Front National was ‘compatible with the Republic’.

Sarkozy also said that nationhood, immigration and border security, all strong themes of the Front National, ‘had to be talked about’ and that he would tackle them head on ‘so that [Front National voters] understand clearly that we have heard their message’.

François Bayrou, the centrist candidate who came in fifth with about 9 percent of the vote, said:

‘This race on one’s belly for FN themes is humiliating. To pretend that the imbalances in the social accounts are down to immigrants is to renounce half a century of social progress in France.

Left Front candidate Jean Luc Melenchon who garnered 11% of the vote in Sunday argued on his  blog today that the first round results showed that Le Pen’s rise, particularly among working class voters, was very closely aligned with Sarko’s fall and that a process of ‘transfusion’ was taking place with the Front National sucking the blood out of Sarkozy’s dying UMP party .

Two French newspapers have added to the pressure on Sarkozy by publishing damning articles likening President Nicolas Sarkozy to WWII-era fascist leader Marshall Philippe Pétain.

Liberal daily Liberation published a sombre and funereal black and white photograph on its front page.  At the bottom of the page was a quote of Sarkozy saying that Le Pen was ‘compatible with the Republic’.

In an editorial, the newspaper accused the president of ‘Pétaniste’ zeal for using the May 1 International Workers’ Day celebration to hold a rally in defence of “real work”.

The reference was to wartime collaborationist leader of Vichy France Marshall Philippe Pétain, who in 1941 declared May 1 a ‘national celebration of work and harmony’.

Communist-linked daily L’Humanité published pictures of Sarkozy and Pétain side by side on the front page.

L’Humanite accused Sarkozy of attempting a ‘takeover bid’ of May 1 , international workers day, as part of his campaign to win over the 6.4 million voters who backed Le Pen in the first round ballot.

Who voted for Le Pen? Who voted for Melenchon?

IN THE PRESS / RUE89

Eric Dupin

Beyond the overall balance in favour of the left, the first round of the presidential election
will remain marked by two surges with implications for the future: the influence of the National
Front and unique installation the Left Front in the political landscape. A geographical and sociological analysis of the vote helps identify the novelty of these phenomena.

Le Pen

Never have the Front National  picked up so many votes: 6.4 million against 4.8 in 2002. Its success on 22 April shows its ability to win over several different electorates. With her broad focus and a less sulfurous reputation that her father, Marine Le Pen has added successive strata.

The Front National maintains its strong scores on the Mediterranean coast where the extreme right had
made its first inroads in the 80s. Le Pen collected 24.8% of the votes cast in the Var, 24.2% in the
Pyrenees-Orientales, 23.4% in the Bouches du Rhone or 23.5% in the Alpes-Maritimes. In Menton, a peaceful coastal town with an elderly and well off population, it got 25.7% of the vote.

Marine Le Pen then reclaimed the North East of France, with its  battered industrial tradition, which had
voted for her father in 2002 but was seduced by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. She captured 24.7% of the
vote in Moselle and 28.2% in the symbolic commune of Gandhinagar where she is well ahead of Sarkozy (19%). Five years ago, in this place marked by the steel crisis, the UMP candidate was leading with 25.6%,
against only 16.2% to Jean-Marie Le Pen.

The Front National candidate improved her performance in places dominated by social suffering. She recorded 25.3% of the vote in Haute-Marne, ranking first in the small town of Rachecourt-sur-Marne (32.7%) hit by deindustrialization. Aisne (26.3%), Ardennes (24.5%) or the Oise (25.1%) also provide some high
scores. In the latter department, note the 32.5% collected in Granvilliers, the town in the Picardy plateau that is facing a rise in insecurity.

The success of the Front National also rests on expanding its influence in the territories which were once unfavourable. Cantonal elections of 2011 had already revealed an advance of the party in western France, but also in rural areas where the lower classes were driven out of cities by property prices.

Le Pen is below 12% in only one department of Brittany, one of Finistere, although this region of
Catholic culture and low immigrant presence once ‘sulked’ at Front National.

She gets 19.2% in the Sarthe region where support has been traditional, if moderate, gaining far more than her father in 2002. Then there’s her performance in the rural department of the Creuse, struggling with economic and social problems. With 16.3% of the vote, Marine boosts her father’s performance from a decade ago (11.2%).

Sarko

The recovery of a part of the working class territory by the Front National has hit Sarkozy. The geography
of Sarkozy’s vote is dominated by the most conservative departments like the Vendee (32.9%) or the Haute-Savoie (34.1%). Sarkozy is a hit in the affluent and aging Alpes-Maritimes (37.2%) in the Var, peaking at 58.3% in Saint-Tropez.

Sarkozy reaches new heights in the wealthy Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine), with 72.6% of the vote, Francois Bayrou having to settle for 7.5% of votes.

An extensive survey OpinionWay-Fiducial, conducted April 22 with 10,418 voters for Le Figaro,
specifies the sociological profile of the electorate. Le Pen led strongly among
workers (35%) and the most poorly educated (29%). She is overtaken by Hollande in households
earning less than 1,000 euros per month (24% against 27%) and in the 1 000 to 1 999 euros (28% against
23%) bracket.

In contrast to his performance in 2007, Sarkozy was not been supported on Sunday by people of the
traditional right. His score rises among voters over 60 years of age (39%), artisans, merchants and business leaders (42%) or in a household with an income of more than 3500 euros (37%).

Mélenchon
The geography of the vote in favor of Jean-Luc Melenchon reflects only very partially the map of
historical influence of Communism in France. The candidate of the Left Front certainly gets strong scores in fine old red earth such as the Haute-Vienne (14.4% of votes). There is also his performance in the Ariege (16.9%) or the Alpes de Haute-Provence (15.2%).

In the Northeast, Mélenchon struggles even if he secures 12.1% of the votes in Meurthe-et-Moselle. In the West, he gets some surprising scores in Britanny such as 11.5% of votes in Finistere. Again, the results reflect an ability to bring together various electorates.

The Paris region: Mélenchon is a hit in north east Paris, formerly a working class distruct but now “Bobois”    [ ‘bourgeois-bohemian’, or young, middle-class, educated urban professional]. He captures 14.1% of the votes in the eleventh arrondissement and climbed to 17.4% in the twentieth.

But the candidate of the Left Front also carries strong scores in the communes of Seine-Saint-Denis
(17%). In Aubervilliers (20.5%), La Courneuve (20.4%) or Saint-Denis (21.7%), nearly doubling his national score even if these areas of with strong immigrant populations largely backed Francois Hollande albeit against a background of high abstention.

According OpinionWay, Mélenchon initially attracted the young, with 16% among those under 25 years. He
convinced both 15% workers and 14% of “professionals”. The Left Front was particularly supported by
public sector employees (14% against 12% in the private).

His influence is inversely proportional to the level of income, with a maximum of 17% in the lowest
bracket. If Mélenchon is far from having succeeded in socio-economic categories dominated by Le Pen he managed to be heard among some of them.

Hollande
The Socialist candidate scores highest with executives (34%) and technicians (35%) but is also supported by a quarter of the working class electorate.

Similarly he does well among the over 50s (31%), while attracting a quarter of the youngest. And his following is almost even among the poorest households (27%) and the richest (29%).

The comfortable upper middle-class suburban communities that carry considerable electoral weight seem to have finally tipped on Hollande’s side. Pontault-Combault in the sparsely populated Seine-et-Marne commune puts Hollande (31.4%) in the lead. Five years ago, it had plumped for Sarkozy in almost reverse proportions (33.6%).

Rue89

Translation by Revolting Europe

If we think about what is good for everyone, we can solve things

Left Front leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon talks to Humanité about socialism, humanism, the environment and fixing France. More 

France’s National Front leader attends Holocaust deniers’ ball

Marine Le Pen guest of honour at the “Vampires’ Ball” in Vienna. L’Humanité More