French far-right set for poll gains as Hollande braces for drubbing
Print Edition
FRANCE yesterday held a second round of voting in local elections that are set to result in a breakthrough by the far-right and trigger a reshuffle of the beleaguered Socialist government.
With his party facing a drubbing in the first electoral test since his 2012 election, President Francois Hollande is expected to react by ordering a shakeup of his government.
Popular Interior Minister Manuel Valls is tipped to replace current Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault.
The elections will make history with an all-female contest in Paris guaranteeing that a woman will become mayor of the French capital for the first time.
It also looked set to be a landmark vote for the far-right National Front (FN), which is poised to claim a small but significant foothold in France’s local government by winning control of as many as a dozen mid-sized towns.
Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist candidate for mayor of Paris, went into the election as the favorite but her rival Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a former minister for the center-right UMP party, did sufficiently well in the first round to suggest she could edge the contest to join a very small club of women who have run major cities around the world.
The FN’s strong first-round performance was widely interpreted as reflecting exasperation among voters with the Hollande government.
The Socialists’ failure to get a stagnant French economy moving again and reverse the upward march of unemployment is seen as having aggravated some voters’ anger over other issues, such as crime and immigration, and increased disillusionment with mainstream politicians of all stripes.
Ayrault is widely expected to be made the principal scapegoat for the government’s failures and Valls, a dapper and tough-talking character who has broad appeal across the political spectrum, is the favorite to replace him.
Hollande’s former partner, Segolene Royal, is tipped for a comeback following his separation from girlfriend Valerie Trierweiler in January after revelations of his affair with actress Julie Gayet. Trierweiler reportedly vetoed Royal from being included in Hollande’s first cabinet despite the mother of his four children being a long-established Socialist Party heavyweight and former presidential candidate herself.
In Avignon, where the far-right party came on top in first-round voting, results are being watched particularly closely: the director of the Avignon Festival, one of the world’s largest theater festivals, has threatened to relocate it from the southeastern city if the National Front wins.
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