FRANCE REFUSES TO TURN
Douglas Johnson on how almost
all forecasts about Sunday's elections were proved wrong
Paris SUNDAY'S regional elections concerned only the 22 regions of metropolitan France (plus Corsica and the four overseas regions). They were expected to be a turn- ing-point in French national life. They would support or reject the Socialist gov- ernment of Lionel Jospin, with its Commu- nist and environmental allies; they would review the position' of the republican Right, which had won 20 of the 22 regions in 1992, the parliamentary elections of 1993 and the presidential elections of 1995 before being trounced in the unnecessary parliamentary elections of last year; they would illuminate what was happening in the Front National, where Jean-Marie Le Pen, approaching his 70th birthday, was reportedly losing control of a party which had reached its optimum strength and which now could only decline; and they would confirm whether or not, as many sages were saying, it was the regions that held the future of France.
Opinion polls predicted a Socialist victo- ry and a defeat of the republican Right. To such an extent was this accepted that politicians spoke of an earthquake mark- ing the collapse of the Right in their bas- tion of the Ile de France. Socialist self-confidence turned into smugness. The republican Right did not hide their pes- simism. They spoke about the distant future rather than the immediate future. They spoke about the differences that sep- arated members of the Socialist majority. They mocked the idea that the 35-hour week was a means of solving the problems of unemployment, and Edouard Balladur, leading the campaign in the vital Ile de France, put forward the modest argument that France should not put all her eggs in the one Socialist basket. As for the Front National, the polls predicted that it would stay at around its high score of 15 per cent or possibly only 14 per cent, but Le Pen showed that he had become less intransi- gent when he suggested that the republi- can Right and his Right should agree on a programme and when he said in Paris on 12 March that negotiations could begin.
The opinion polls told of another group which would win the elections: the abstain- ers. It was said that only 45 per cent of the electors felt really concerned about the regional elections. Others thought that they would vote but had no strong feelings about the result. One poll predicted the rate of abstention at 39 per cent, and it was generally agreed that such a rate would be disastrous.
As it happened, instead of the over- whelming Socialist victory, there was rather a modest one. It was noticeable that certain extreme Left groups, including Arlette Laguillier's Trotskyite Lutte Ouvriere, protesting against Jospin's record on unemployment, got some 6 per cent of the votes nationally. But nor was it a crushing defeat for the republican Right. It was bound to lose some regions (win- ning 20 of the 22 regions six years ago was an accident, part of the decline of Mitter- randisme) and what happened last Sunday was a repetition of what took place at the general election in June. The republican Right is stagnating. The opinion polls underestimated the Front National, which has slightly exceeded its 15 per cent maxi- mum in past performances and did extremely well in certain regions (in Provence, Alpes, and COte d'Azur as expected, and in Franche-Comte, which was not expected).
But, while the opinion polls had foretold a massive abstention from voting, the real- ity, no less than 42 per cent, was not fore- seen. This was the most significant aspect of the election. So what about the turning-points in French national life? The period of Social- ist government has coincided with econom- ic recovery. Yet Jospin's victory was not big. It cannot be forgotten that one family in ten can be classified as living in poverty or, according to another estimate, between 20 and 25 per cent of French people are living precariously. Where are the fruits of prosperity going? A Socialist government can only be ill at ease before such ques- tions.
Should the republican Right cease its division between `Gaullists' and `Giscardr- ens' (to use convenient terms)? Should they come to a working agreement with the Front National, as Jean-Francois Mancel, president of the regional council of the Oise and former secretary-general of the Gaullists, has proposed? And since Bal- ladur and the Gaullist Philippe Seguin have put the blame on President Chirac and his decision to dissolve the National Assembly last year when they had a good majority, what are the relations between the party and the President? The presidency is the only post now held by the Right, but what can Chirac do? It is true that he has a high popular rating and it is true that he distin- guished himself over the Iraq crisis by showing both firmness towards Iraq and independence with regard to America. (This distinguished him from Blair, who appeared to be in Clinton's pocket, but this was more of a help to Jospin since people have stopped asking if he is `Blairissable'.) And the Front National? Is it going to change? The Front's Bruno Megret has said that if the political world is divided into three, then one must go, and the one that must go is the one in the middle. Does this mean that the nationalist, racist, reac- tionary Right is going to become the civilised Right?
But the biggest question is that of the regions. There is an attempt to explain away the high rate of abstention. Thirty- nine million people were asked to choose 1,772 regional councillors out of 15,421 candidates, voting by proportional repre- sentation. No wonder there was confusion and abstention. In France there are five layers of administration: the commune, with an elected mayor; the department, with a government-appointed prefect; the region, with an elected council which chooses its president; the government, president and prime minister; and Europe, meaning Brussels. The least known of these is the region, which was the creation of Mitterrand and which was seen as the achievement of his first presidency. The region is supposed to be the instrument of modernisation and the regions will form the centres of economic growth: and all this is envisaged as being the France that will merge into Europe.
But 42 per cent still abstained. The regional elections of 1998, like the French Revolution of 1848, were a turning-point that failed to turn.
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