AP
French Socialist Party deputy mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, right, and
outgoing mayor Bertrand Delanoe smile after results were announced in
the second round of the French municipal elections, in Paris on Sunday.
The French government was in full soul-searching mode
on Sunday after the conservative opposition trounced the governing
Socialist Party (PS) in a municipal election run-off that also yielded
gains for the far-right National Front.
Voters across
the country used the election for town councils and mayors to vent
their frustration with President Francois Hollande’s failure to turn
around the battered French economy.
From Reims in the
north-east to Toulouse in the south-west and the central city of
Limoges, PS mayors were shown the door as voters in dozens of
municipalities decamped to former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s
centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).
Other
cities that swung from left to right included Saint-Etienne, Pau and
Angers. Paris, Lyon, Lille and Strasbourg bucked the trend by
re-electing PS mayors, while voters in Marseille returned the UMP
incumbent.
In Paris, Socialist Anne Hidalgo defeated the UMP’s Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, to become the capital’s first female mayor.
Elsewhere,
the UMP was savouring its spoils, which come two months before European
elections, in which the anti-immigration FN is tipped to place first or
second.
Provisional results showed the UMP and other
right-wing parties polling 45.91 per cent of the vote, compared with
40.57 per cent for left-wing parties, 6.84 per cent for the far right
and 6.62 for independents.
“France’s top party is the UMP,” party leader Jean-Francois Cope declared.
The
FN was also on the march, winning 14 or 15 municipalities according to
the interior ministry, including the northern former coal mining town of
Henin-Beaumont, which it won in the first round of voting on March 23.
Frejus
and Beziers, two Mediterranean towns of more than 50,000 inhabitants
that have been hard hit by the crisis, were among others to elect FN or
FN-backed mayors.
FN leader Marine Le Pen, who has
worked hard to rid the party of its extremist image, said the polls
showed the party was now a viable alternative to the PS and UMP.
“Today the FN has shaken up the traditional UMP-PS duo,” she told supporters.
The
party failed, however, to convert its first-round lead in some towns,
such as the Forbach in the north-east, where FN vice president Florian
Philippot was defeated by the Socialist incumbent, and Avignon, where
the FN candidate also lost to the Socialist candidate.
Those
wins provided little comfort for the Socialists, who were punished for
the government’s failure to create jobs and growth, 22 months after Mr.
Hollande took office.
Voter turnout plunged to a new
record low on Sunday. Ipsos polling company estimated a turnout of 62
per cent, down from 63.6 per cent in the first round, which was already
an historic low for a municipal election.
Apathy was
particularly acute among left-wing voters, who have been disillusioned
with Mr. Hollande’s shift from traditional leftist tax-and-spend
policies to a more business-friendly approach.
Former
Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal, who is the mother of
Mr. Hollande’s four children, expressed alarm at the results, calling
them a “very severe warning”.
Mr. Hollande, who is
expected to reshuffle his cabinet in the coming days, promised during
the week to “draw a lesson” from the results but has also vowed to stick
to his current course of trying to restore lost competitiveness.
One
of those whose position is seen as vulnerable is Prime Minister
Jean-Marc Ayrault, who acknowledged Sunday a share in the government’s
“collective” responsibility for the election result.
“It’s a clear message which must be fully heard,” Mr. Ayrault said.
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