FRANCE regional elections: The Left wins !

[Rochambeau]

Left parties (Socialist Party, Greens) win the first round of the regional elections. It's a sanction to the anti-social policy of the Chirac-Raffarin government analysts say. Extreme right Front National progressing too.

http://news.tf1.fr/news/regionales/0,,2123770,00.html

Links in english to come.

[EdGy]

1. Results: Left 40.5%; Right 34%; FN 17.5%; extreme left 5%

The left got 40.5% of the vote; the right 34%; the Front National 17.5%, and the extreme left 5%.



Poussée de la gauche et du FN

Les premières estimations Sofres-Unilog pour TF1 donnent l'avantage à la gauche, une poussée du FN et annoncent un vote sanction pour Jean-Pierre Raffarin. La gauche recueillerait 40,5 % des voix, la droite 34%, le FN 17,5 % et l'extrême-gauche 5%. Le PS pourrait ravir à la droite Poitou-Charentes puisque Ségolène Royal obtiendrait 47% contre la candidate de Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

...

[burrowowl]

2. Vive Poitou-Charentes!

The Frant National is worriesome.
Going to check out Le Monde.

[tobius]

3. a rebuke to chirac? nt

[mobuto]

4. More

PARIS (Reuters) - France's far-right National Front and the left made gains in regional elections on Sunday, an exit poll showed, in a warning to the conservative government over high unemployment and unpopular state spending cuts.
The exit poll by the CSA polling group showed the far right won 17.2 percent of the vote, close to the shock 17.8 percent veteran National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen scored when he came second in the 2002 presidential election.

Mainstream left-wing parties, including the Greens, secured 40.3 percent of the votes compared with just more than 37 percent in the last regional vote in 1998, the exit poll showed.

The governing conservatives of President Jacques Chirac slumped to 33.8 percent from 37 percent in 1998 but could still make up ground in run-off ballots on March 28.


--continued--

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4613968§ion=news

[Rochambeau]

5. A rebuke to Chirac ?

Yes a rebuke to the conservative government because of its social and economic policy. But don't worry, it's absolutly not a rebuke to Chirac on the international matter. International affairs haven't been in any case a subject of debate in the campaign because there is no debate on that issue in France, the consensus is barely absolute (99% maybe?)in the population.

Gongratulations to the Left and keep fighting hard for the second round next Sunday !!:toast: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Rochambeau]

6. Le Monde...

http://www.lemonde.fr/

the title says everything : Vote-sanction contre
la droite aux régionales

[Zhade]

7. Leftists coming up in the world. Good.

After all these years of center-rightists and rightists, good to see some sanity prevailing.

I'm particularly pleased with Spain's (non-terrorist-appeasing) repudiation of the right. Good for them!

[burrowowl]

8. But whem you add

the Right and Far Right vote, is it scary.

[Zynx]

9. Their conservatives would be Democrats over here.

[burrowowl]

10. Yes

which shows how far right the Dems have gone.
I hope Chirac goes, he is a bit fascist/corporatist sur les bords.

[rocktivity]

11. What's French for

CROOKED LIARS! LYING CROOKS!

:headbang:
rocknation

[JohnLocke]

12. MENTEURS TORDUS! COUCHER TORD! (nt)

[DBoon]

13. Does the French Communist Party still amount to anything?

Just curious.

[burrowowl]

14. Hue, PCF

joined with the PS and Greens.

[Rochambeau]

15. The Communist Party...

is having a long, long agony, going deeper and deeper in every election. The trotskists parties (Lutte Ouvrière and Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, presenting one candidate for both parties now) the old ennemies of the Communist Party are now almost as strong as it is, wich is quite "a revolution".

And about the right wing in France to be closer to the Dems on the political scale, it's not right.
They DO want to destroy our welfare state, they ARE in favor of the most orthodox conservative policy about social matters and economy. Their model is USA on those matters, they repeat it each time you ask them the question but, the fact is that France ("old France" they say, does it ring something ?) is fighting a true "guerilla" about those topics and they know that if they try "the hard way" it will be really "bloody". So they fight their own guerilla too, very slowly, step by step they attack:
Privatisations of public services (next step is EDF the energy state company), softening of the Work Code (translation? Code du Travail), reducing of the unemployment benefits and of the types of recipients (295 000 unemployed persons lost everything in a day due to the new rule), cuts of the State spending on every social field etc...etc....etc....
But it is true too that they can't be compared to the US Conservative Party on every other fields (secularisation, international matters etc...). I should say to sum it up that they are very typical "european right wingers".
Of course we have also libertarians(ex-Démocratie Liberale, their leader is Alain Madelin) who want to privatise EVERYTHING and HATE the state. They were the only political branch in France to be in favor of the war in Iraq (strange isn't it?) Their idol is GWB, they are a minority of the UMP Chirac's party now, but when they tried to go alone in elections they never made more than 2 or 3%. On the other hand, their ideological influence within the Chirac's party is very, very important and increasing every day.

[BonjourUSA]

16. The French political life would be a nightmare for an American voter.

First : this Sunday was a firt round of a local and regional poll. Certainly this election couldn't have been anything else than a national test because the next one will be in 2007 and the French people dissatisfaction is high against the gov. But we need deep structural reforms and these reforms aren't very popular. Just a example : we can't continue to get national debt of 20000 € per capita - 25 000 $ - (include babies). All European countries already made these reforms with more or less pain, we have to do too. The French Right and Left wings have very close solutions about these reforms (their opposite speech is only for the gallery)

Second : The Chirac-Raffarin gov would be a dangerous leftist for Kerry. We can't compare our both political way with the same criteria.

Third : the only real and very disturbing worry is the ultra right party score (FN). Between 15 and 20% (even if this rate doesn't increase) is absolutely a danger because an important part of the French people believes that xenophobia, racism and return to the past are a political solution for its fear of the future.

[Rochambeau]

17. I don't know...

regarding to what I've posted on post #15 if it is necessary to say that I completely disagree with the center-rightist opinions written on post #16.(except Point 3)

We could argue on every point and even every statements of those points but it's clearly not the place for a franco-french debate even if I'm absolutly sure (an other point of disagreement) that every american DUer here would perfectly understand the debate (specificaly those who were deploring the rightist drift of the Democratic party and it's surrender to the so-called divine laws of the free market orthodoxy).