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Shift to the left in French local votes

Published Mar 22, 2008 8:38 AM

Nobody disputes that the UMP, the right-wing governing party, suffered a major defeat on March 16 in the local elections held all over France. Marseilles was the only large city where the UMP kept its control, but even that control was diminished. Of the thirty other large cities where the right confronted a “left” party, the right lost.

The dominant left party in France is the Socialist Party—which is hardly more left than the Democratic Party is here—but the French Communist Party has traditionally had a strong implantation on the local level. Other parties which present a more anti-capitalist program, like Workers Struggle (LO) and the League for Communist Revolution (LCR), also have a noticeable presence.

Although the left combined for this string of victories, the percentage of votes it obtained was not that dominant.

The answer to why such a major shift in electoral support for Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP took place has a number of factors. Some of his supporters were perturbed by his divorce and remarriage, conducted in a glare of publicity, with no concern for propriety. A few months later Sarkozy made an extremely crude and sexist comment to someone who refused to shake his hand, and this was caught on the French version of YouTube.

Regarding political program, other voters might have been objecting to Sarkozy’s interventions in Chad with the Zoe’s Ark kidnapping, along with the military intervention defending the French puppet in early February, followed up by French special forces getting caught well inside the Sudan.

Sarkozy has also promised to send French troops to reinforce Canadian troops in Afghanistan. He has taken other foreign policy steps that indicated that France was now following the lead of U.S. imperialism more consistently in its foreign entanglements.

Workers overall and residents of the predominantly West African and North African suburbs, where social problems and inequalities are particularly harsh, were turned off by Sarkozy’s attacks on pensions, medical care and workers rights under the guise of improving France’s “competitivity.”

The fascist-right party called the National Front at most got one seat on a regional council.

In the Spanish state a week earlier, the PSOE—Spanish socialists—won the national election for a new parliament with 43.64 percent of the votes as against 40.12 percent for the right-wing Popular Party. While the PSOE didn’t get a majority, which means it will have to set up a coalition government, it did get five seats more than in the last election.