http://workers.labor.net.au/133/c_historicalfeature_france.html
Workers Online (Labornet)
Issue No. 133 - 26 April 2002
Politics
Left Right Out In France
The results of the first round vote for the French presidency have
led to mass protests and calls for national unity, Paul Howes reports.
***************
The result of 19.88 % for incumbent
conservative Jacques Chirac, 16.18 % for socialist Lionel Jospin and
16.86 % for the far right nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen means that,
for the first time since 1945, the second round of the presidential
elections, due on May 5, will be contested by two right-aligned
candidates.
The defeated Socialist candidate was Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, an
uninspiring technocrat with a patchy and unusual political background
that includes time in the 60s with an underground Trotskyist sect
known as the International Communist Organisation. Jospin, who has
announced his intention to quit politics, is sure to be remembered as
the man who led his party to it's most glorious defeat since World
War I.
Many are hailing the significant result as a great personal victory
for Le Pen and aa a signal that the far-right is on the rise in
Europe.
However, all is not as it seems. The rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen is not
as "meteoritic" as some are claiming. Le Pen has stood for the
Presidency four times and his "National Front" party has been on the
mainstream political scene for over 25 years. Le Pen received a
result of 14% in 1988 and 15% in 1995. So an increase of his vote to
16.86 % is not surprising in light of the post September 11
environment and the rising French unemployment rate.
Despite some commentators claiming in the lead up to the election
that Le Pen had "mainstreamed" his policies he still calls for the
isolation of France through withdrawing from the European Union,
re-establishing the Franc as the national currency, stopping
immigration, restoring the death penalty and for the doubling of
current defence spending to name a few.
However the reality for Le Pen is that this result is nowhere near
what he should have received. In 1999 Le Pen's National Front went
through a devastating split resulting in the formation of a "split"
party known as the National Republican Movement led by Le Pen's
former deputy Bruno Megret. Megret received a modest but not
insignificant result of 2.34 % at the election. Had the split not
taken place one could assume that Le Pen's vote could been as much as
19.2 % only 0.6 % behind Chirac.
In fact, the "Le Pen" factor is not the major point of change in this
unusual crisis. What is interesting is the splintering of the Left
vote, which has not happened in such a major way since the 1970s,
through the genuinely meteoritic rise of the Trotskyist far left,
whose combined vote amounted to an astounding 12.29 % and the
collapse of the Communist Party vote.
The death of the French Communist Party (PCF) is not anything to be
over-looked in this result. The PCF was the largest party in the
National Assembly from 1945 until the late 1980s and has dominated
the French Trade Union movement and the left in general for decades.
The PCF was known as a "Euro-Communist" party, it distanced its self
from the USSR following the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and evolved into
a moderate left social democratic party which was in a de-jure
coalition with the Socialists since the early 1980s.
The high profile PCF candidate Robert Hue scored a result of 3.37 %
(957,385) compared with the a result of 4.25 % (1,203,757) for the
Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League's (LCR) candidate, a
relatively unknown postal worker Olivier Besancenot and overall fifth
place winner Arlette Lagullier of the far left sect Workers Struggle
(Lutte Ouvrière) who received 5.72 % (1,621,096) of the vote.
Lagullier is a cult figure of the French Far Left and is also a
Member of the European Parliament.
Over all, the Left vote was 44.77 % (including the Greens), the
moderate right vote was 36.05%, and the far right vote 19.2%.
Presuming all Left preferences would have flowed to Jospin and all
Right preferences would have flowed to Chirac, with the rest split
evenly, the eventual result would have been close to 44.77 % for
Jospin and 55.23 % for Chirac.
If France had a preferential system of voting similar to our system
in Australia the two party preferred result would be 44.77 Socialist
and 55.23 Conservative compared with the result of the 2001
Australian federal election 48.97 ALP and 51.03 Coalition it doesn't
look so bad.
Not to mention that the Socialist Party still governs the National
Assembly whose powers supercede that of the Presidency. It is likely
that the Socialist's coalition with the Greens and Communists is
likely to continue and based on the results of the Presidential
election it is likely that their coalition will retain power.
With the Second round of voting only one week away the French Left
are mobilising to re-cover as much ground as possible in the lead up
to the National Assembly elections I June. Massive demonstrations are
planned for May 1, which will clash with National Front
demonstrations planned for the same day.
Leaders of the French Left with representatives of the Catholic
Church and French Jews are rallying around the conservative Chirac
calling on their respective constituencies to put their support
behind Chirac to "save the republic". Realistically Le Pen does not
stand a change and will be lucky to increase his vote beyond 19.2 %
Far-Right vote given Chirac the largest majority for a French
President since De Gaulle.
So whilst the debates are sure to rage in cafes across France on how
to resurrect the Socialist Party surely another debate needs to take
place on how to reform the French electoral system to ensure this
farce does not take place again.
|