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More Elections Await France
// Rightists perched to take parliament too
Campaigning for parliamentary elections officially began in France yesterday. The majority of surveys predict a sure win for the pro-presidential Union for a Popular Movement. That comes not only as the fruit of Nicolas Sarkozy's victory in the presidential election, but of approval for his new cabinet, announced on Friday, as well. If the predictions come true, the new government can institute the president's promised reforms without even a glance at the opposition.
Deja vu
The French go to the polls to elect 577 members of the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, on June 10, just over a month after the presidential election. A week after that, they return again to the urns to pick the best of the best in the second round. Under French law, a candidate becomes an MP if he receives 25 percent of the votes in the first round; 12.5 percent of the votes draws his opponent into the second round.
The parliamentary elections do not offer the suspense of the presidential election. All predictions are that the division of power in the new parliament will reflect the results of the presidential election, with the single difference that the Union for a Popular Movement will have a more substantial lead over the Socialist Party than Sarkozy had over Segolene Royal on May 6.
No one has the slightest doubt that the ruling party will take the majority of seats in the National Assembly. The only question is whether it will be an absolute majority. Almost all surveys say yes. According to an Ipsos survey released on Sunday, about 40 percent of French voters plan to vote for the ruling party, while the Socialist Party and its two partners can expect 28-percent support. That means that the Union for a Popular Movement will not only keep its 357 seats, but take several more. The Socialists, who have 141 seats in the current National Assembly, can hope for 153 in the very best of cases.
Third place in the parliament will go to the Democratic Movement, the old centrist party of Francois Bayrou, with 10 percent of the vote. Bayrou originally intended to name his movement the Democratic Party, but there was a little-known party by that name already in France at the time. Others say that he changed “party” to movement because the abbreviation PD (Parti democrate) is used to indicate people of nontraditional sexual orientation in French slang.
Fourth place, with 8 percent of the vote, is promised to Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front, which took that share of the vote in the first round of the presidential election. The remaining parties, including the Greens, Communists and the Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Tradition Party, which represents the agricultural population, are unlikely to pass through the five-percent barrier.
Seeking Converts
The official start of the election campaign coincided with the first day of the new French government confirmed last Friday. And the ruling party's predicted victory in the parliamentary elections is directly connected to the new cabinet of ministers that the media are already calling a government of national unity.
Sarkozy borrowed the recipe for an attractive government from his one-time competitors Royal and Bayrou, who convinced the nation that member of the government should be chosen for their practical accomplishments, rather than their ideology. As president, Sarkozy is bringing his competitors' slogan to life. Not only members of his party have received appointments, so have four Socialists and one centrist. In addition, two advisors to former president Jacques Chirac, whose policies Sarkozy earlier threatened to bury forever. Finally, seven of its members are women.
The new foreign minister, Socialist Bernard Kouchner, has been the source of the greatest comment, both at home and abroad. A few months ago, he was a foreign policy consultant to Royal and called the current president the French Silvio Berlusconi – hardly a compliment. Kouchner is known to support Turkey's admission to the European Union, something Sarkozy is categorically against. But Kouchner, like the president, is in favor of stronger transatlantic ties and has repeatedly expressed his regret at the “Americophobia” dominating in France. In 2003, Kouchner supported, with reservations, the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and a year later advanced the idea that “humanitarian intervention” in dictatorial regimes is unavoidable. Kouchner's accomplishments include is activities as minister of health in the socialist government of Lionel Jospin and his work in the UN mission in Kosovo, which he headed at the end of the 1990s. He first won a place in the hearts of the French in 1971 as a founder of Doctors without Frontiers.
Public opinion surveys show that Sarkozy did not err in his appointment of Kouchner, who is the second most popular member of the government after Minister of the Economy, Finance and Employment Jean Louis Borloo. As minister of employment, Borloo was known as the “social conscience” of the government and achieved a significant reduction in unemployment. That experience will undoubtedly be useful to him now to fight the 8.3-percent unemployment in France, one of the highest levels in Europe. Third place in the popularity rating goes to Minister of Justice Rachida Dati, the daughter of an illiterate Moroccan and Algerian who grew up with 11 brothers and sisters.
Another significant figure in the new French government is former Chirac advisor Alain Juppe, also former prime minister and former Union for a Popular Movement leader. He has been given the No. 3 position, a position responsible for ecology, energy and transportation that was created by Sarkozy, who has promised to make environmental protection a priority. Former defense minister Michele Alliot-Marie has become the interior minister. Sarkozy, who occupied that post himself, reduced its functions as president by taking away control over immigration. A new Ministry of Immigration and National Identity has been formed and will be headed by 49-year-old Brice Hortefeux. Hortefeux was a witness at Sarkozy's first wedding and is the godfather of his oldest son, and seems to be the only close friend of the president to become a minister in the cabinet.
On the whole, the cabinet chosen personally by Sarkozy has found approval among 69 percent of the French. It is expected that voter sympathy will turn into a victory for the right in the parliamentary elections on June 10 and 17.
If those hopes are realized, the new government will receive carte blanche to carry out the painful but necessary reforms promised by Sarkozy. The first tasks of the cabinet will be to reduce taxes, create a more flexible labor market and clamp down on social order. They do not intend to waste time. Last weekend, Prime Minister Francois Fillon promised to start working on those ambition undertakings at a special summer session to be held immediately after the parliamentary elections.
Natalia Portyakova
All the Article in Russian as of May 22, 2007
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