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Love Le Pen? Don't worry, you'll see more of him
From the Guardian
Summary: The Left is still in shambles of its utter defeat last year. The right is seeing its popularity fade quickly. As a result, Le Pen is highly likely to gain many votes in the local and regional elections next spring.
I think it is actually good that such upcoming victory gets discussed a few months beforehand. Last time, we were completely taken by surprise by Le Pen's result; we actually became aware of the danger one week before the election.
The problem is that we can be aware all we want, we won't turn the tide if nothing is done about it. The major left-wing party, the Socialist Party, dwells in internal struggles for power and is unable to really oppose Chirac's policies. The Greens and the Communists are nowhere to be seen, and they won't participate in changing the tide any. The centrist party is the only one voicing opposition seriously, but it is hampered by its ideological closeness with Chirac's and by its small voter-base.
OTOH, Chirac's party (who has swallowed all of the Republican right) displeases more and more. The police minister is less and less successful in shifting the media's attention from the utter amateurishness of this government. Our wonderful cabinet is able to angry everyone: European partners, far right nutjobs, immigrants, workers... Only the police minister seems to please the population, but this popularity fades.
What this means is a terrible mistrust towards ordinary politicians, and the winds of change will be expressed through votes for Le Pen and votes for the radical left. The radical left will be probably higher than before, but Le Pen's attractiveness to desperate people is much higher
Le Pen in sight of a regional triumph
As French far-right leader begins regional election campaign, many fear his party could gain control of a large part of the country
Jon Henley in Nice
Friday September 19, 2003
The Guardian
There are many grounds for mistrusting Jean-Marie Le Pen, but electoral prediction is not generally among them. When he hazards a guess the veteran leader of France's far right is rarely wrong. And this, he said yesterday, is the most winnable election of all his long career.
Even his opponents agree that next spring's regional polls, the first since the presidential and parliamentary elections last year which produced the biggest upset in the country's postwar political history, will probably give the pugnacious National Front president his greatest chance yet of a historic victory.
"I see things very clearly," he said yesterday, formally beginning his campaign for the presidency of the Provence, Alpes and Côte d'Azur (Paca) region before a battery of TV cameras in a chartered yacht replete with champagne and canapes in the Baie des Anges, off Nice.
"There will be three major contenders in the second round," he said. "Neither the right nor the left will withdraw - as they did to wreck our chances last year - and they certainly won't merge their lists.
"I am confident that here, finally, we will emerge as the winners of a three-way battle."
Many observers think Mr Le Pen may be right. The anti-immigrant Front has come close to controlling France's 20 regional councils before, notably at the last polls in 1998, when several conservative council presidents tried to make ultimately unsuccessful deals with far-right leaders in an effort to retain their seats.
This time its chances of winning an outright victory, particularly in its heartlands in eastern and southern France, may be even better.
The Socialist party is still reeling from the events of last year, when their presidential candidate, Lionel Jospin, was knocked out by Mr Le Pen, and their government humiliated by a landslide conservative victory in parliamentary polls.
The early flush of Jean-Pierre Raffarin's centre-right government has faded, and its approval rating is falling steadily on issues such as its allegedly inept handling of this summer's heatwave and its unpopular reforms of state pensions, the civil service and the national health system.
A senior Front official, Carl Lang, estimated yesterday that the party should reach the second round of the two-stage elections in "probably 16 or 17 regions". In 1998 it won an average of 15.25% of the vote and returned 275 regional councillors; even its opponents expect it to do a great deal better this time.
It could also be helped by a change in the voting laws introduced by the government earlier this year.
Aimed primarily at spoiling the chances of minority parties, many of the bill's measures were ruled unconstitutional, and what remains of the legislation, giving the second-round winner a bonus of 25% of all council seats, "could now really work to our advantage", said Marine Le Pen, the Front's vice-president and her father's likely successor.
Nowhere is the risk of the Front gaining its first taste of serious power higher than in Paca, where Mr Le Pen won a record 28% of the vote in the second round of last year's presidential election. Unemployment there, at 11.5%, is more than two points higher than the national average, encouraging support for the far-right.
Thierry Mariani, a conservative MP who has successfully fought off Front challenges in his southern constituency Vaucluse, said the prospects of Mr Le Pen becoming regional president - with control over a large budget for economic development, education, transport and culture - were "terrifyingly real".
"Here the Front can count on as many votes as both the right and the left," he said. "It would of course be a catastrophe: every regional decision would be politicised."
Mr Mariani knows what he is talking about. In the four southern French town halls it has controlled, Orange, Vitrolles, Marignane and Toulon, the Front has not hesitated to implement its policies of national preference for French citizens in jobs, housing and social benefits, and to promote "traditional" French culture.
Subsidies have been withdrawn from rap and ethnic musicians and from festivals which showed gay movies; cultural centres which held "non-French" events have been closed; schools stopped from offering special meals to Jewish and Muslim children; municipal libraries banned from subscribing to leftwing publications.
In Vitrolles the Front town council briefly offered an illegal £500 "baby subsidy" to couples who added to their family - providing that both parents were of white European origin.
Michel Vauzelle, the current Socialist president of the regional council, is equally pessimistic.
"There's a very big risk," he said. "Neither the left nor the right can win by saying, 'If the worst comes to the worst, we'll merge to keep out the Front.' That would hand them victory on a plate."
Blinking in the sun on the deck of the Star Côte d'Azur yesterday, Mr Le Pen brimmed with an unaccustomed confidence. "True, the president of a region does not have the same powers as the president of the republic," he said. "But victory here will send a very, very strong signal.
"After the earthquake of the presidential elections, it will mark the beginning of fundamental change for France."
As French far-right leader begins regional election campaign, many fear his party could gain control of a large part of the country
Jon Henley in Nice
Friday September 19, 2003
The Guardian
There are many grounds for mistrusting Jean-Marie Le Pen, but electoral prediction is not generally among them. When he hazards a guess the veteran leader of France's far right is rarely wrong. And this, he said yesterday, is the most winnable election of all his long career.
Even his opponents agree that next spring's regional polls, the first since the presidential and parliamentary elections last year which produced the biggest upset in the country's postwar political history, will probably give the pugnacious National Front president his greatest chance yet of a historic victory.
"I see things very clearly," he said yesterday, formally beginning his campaign for the presidency of the Provence, Alpes and Côte d'Azur (Paca) region before a battery of TV cameras in a chartered yacht replete with champagne and canapes in the Baie des Anges, off Nice.
"There will be three major contenders in the second round," he said. "Neither the right nor the left will withdraw - as they did to wreck our chances last year - and they certainly won't merge their lists.
"I am confident that here, finally, we will emerge as the winners of a three-way battle."
Many observers think Mr Le Pen may be right. The anti-immigrant Front has come close to controlling France's 20 regional councils before, notably at the last polls in 1998, when several conservative council presidents tried to make ultimately unsuccessful deals with far-right leaders in an effort to retain their seats.
This time its chances of winning an outright victory, particularly in its heartlands in eastern and southern France, may be even better.
The Socialist party is still reeling from the events of last year, when their presidential candidate, Lionel Jospin, was knocked out by Mr Le Pen, and their government humiliated by a landslide conservative victory in parliamentary polls.
The early flush of Jean-Pierre Raffarin's centre-right government has faded, and its approval rating is falling steadily on issues such as its allegedly inept handling of this summer's heatwave and its unpopular reforms of state pensions, the civil service and the national health system.
A senior Front official, Carl Lang, estimated yesterday that the party should reach the second round of the two-stage elections in "probably 16 or 17 regions". In 1998 it won an average of 15.25% of the vote and returned 275 regional councillors; even its opponents expect it to do a great deal better this time.
It could also be helped by a change in the voting laws introduced by the government earlier this year.
Aimed primarily at spoiling the chances of minority parties, many of the bill's measures were ruled unconstitutional, and what remains of the legislation, giving the second-round winner a bonus of 25% of all council seats, "could now really work to our advantage", said Marine Le Pen, the Front's vice-president and her father's likely successor.
Nowhere is the risk of the Front gaining its first taste of serious power higher than in Paca, where Mr Le Pen won a record 28% of the vote in the second round of last year's presidential election. Unemployment there, at 11.5%, is more than two points higher than the national average, encouraging support for the far-right.
Thierry Mariani, a conservative MP who has successfully fought off Front challenges in his southern constituency Vaucluse, said the prospects of Mr Le Pen becoming regional president - with control over a large budget for economic development, education, transport and culture - were "terrifyingly real".
"Here the Front can count on as many votes as both the right and the left," he said. "It would of course be a catastrophe: every regional decision would be politicised."
Mr Mariani knows what he is talking about. In the four southern French town halls it has controlled, Orange, Vitrolles, Marignane and Toulon, the Front has not hesitated to implement its policies of national preference for French citizens in jobs, housing and social benefits, and to promote "traditional" French culture.
Subsidies have been withdrawn from rap and ethnic musicians and from festivals which showed gay movies; cultural centres which held "non-French" events have been closed; schools stopped from offering special meals to Jewish and Muslim children; municipal libraries banned from subscribing to leftwing publications.
In Vitrolles the Front town council briefly offered an illegal £500 "baby subsidy" to couples who added to their family - providing that both parents were of white European origin.
Michel Vauzelle, the current Socialist president of the regional council, is equally pessimistic.
"There's a very big risk," he said. "Neither the left nor the right can win by saying, 'If the worst comes to the worst, we'll merge to keep out the Front.' That would hand them victory on a plate."
Blinking in the sun on the deck of the Star Côte d'Azur yesterday, Mr Le Pen brimmed with an unaccustomed confidence. "True, the president of a region does not have the same powers as the president of the republic," he said. "But victory here will send a very, very strong signal.
"After the earthquake of the presidential elections, it will mark the beginning of fundamental change for France."
Summary: The Left is still in shambles of its utter defeat last year. The right is seeing its popularity fade quickly. As a result, Le Pen is highly likely to gain many votes in the local and regional elections next spring.
I think it is actually good that such upcoming victory gets discussed a few months beforehand. Last time, we were completely taken by surprise by Le Pen's result; we actually became aware of the danger one week before the election.
The problem is that we can be aware all we want, we won't turn the tide if nothing is done about it. The major left-wing party, the Socialist Party, dwells in internal struggles for power and is unable to really oppose Chirac's policies. The Greens and the Communists are nowhere to be seen, and they won't participate in changing the tide any. The centrist party is the only one voicing opposition seriously, but it is hampered by its ideological closeness with Chirac's and by its small voter-base.
OTOH, Chirac's party (who has swallowed all of the Republican right) displeases more and more. The police minister is less and less successful in shifting the media's attention from the utter amateurishness of this government. Our wonderful cabinet is able to angry everyone: European partners, far right nutjobs, immigrants, workers... Only the police minister seems to please the population, but this popularity fades.
What this means is a terrible mistrust towards ordinary politicians, and the winds of change will be expressed through votes for Le Pen and votes for the radical left. The radical left will be probably higher than before, but Le Pen's attractiveness to desperate people is much higher
Yeah, he's a rabid right winger...
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