France’s anti-immigration National Front (FN) party dealt a major blow to the ruling Socialists on Sunday after several of its candidates took prime position in the first round of local elections.
The main opposition Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party also hailed a “big victory” as initial estimates showed it came out trumps in the elections, as French President Francois Hollande suffers record unpopularity against a backdrop of near-zero growth and high unemployment.
According to preliminary results from the interior ministry, the UMP and allies took 47 percent of the vote nationwide, while the Socialist party and allies took 38 percent, and the FN 5 percent — far higher than its 0.9 percent result in the first round of 2008 municipal polls.
Photo: Reuters
Applauding what she said was “an exceptional vintage for the FN,” Marine Le Pen, head of the anti-immigration, anti-EU party, said the polls marked the “end of the bipolarization of the political scene.”
Although the FN had been expected to do well, the first round results were far better than expected. Its candidates came ahead in several key towns and cities that will put them in pole position in the second round on March 30.
In the former coal-mining town of Henin-Beaumont in northern France, Steeve Briois went a step further and achieved 50.3 percent, an absolute majority that made him the outright winner and mayor.
Under municipal election rules in France, any candidate who gets more than 50 percent is declared the winner and there is no need for a second round.
The FN hopes to claim the mayorship of 10 to 15 mid-sized town after the second round, and if it achieves that, it will have beaten its previous record in 1997 when it had four mayors.
The Socialists immediately responded to the surge of the FN by acknowledging that some voters had registered their discontent with current government policies.
“Some voters expressed their concerns, and even their doubts, by abstaining or through their vote,” French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.
Turnout was dismally low at about 38 percent — a record for French municipal elections.
Ayrault called on voters to rally in the second round to block the “advance of the FN,” in a mirror of 2002 presidential elections when then-FN president Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round, prompting the Socialist party to urge support for UMP candidate Jacques Chirac.
Meanwhile, UMP President Jean-Francois Cope called on those who had voted for the FN to “carry over their vote” onto UMP candidates in the second round.
Cope predicted a “big victory” for his party in the second round, in a sign that corruption scandals that have affected the UMP as well as former French president Nicolas Sarkozy had little impact.
In the French capital, the UMP was encouraged by an unexpected lead won by former Sarkozy minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet — who is competing against Anne Hidalgo, the daughter of Spanish immigrants— in a fierce battle that will see Paris get its first-ever female mayor.
Hidalgo had largely been tipped as the favorite, but the results instead gave Kosciusko-Morizet a handy advantage going into the second round.
Meanwhile, a jihadist group on Sunday repeated its calls for Hollande’s assassination in revenge for France’s recent interventions in Africa, terrorist monitoring group SITE said.
The al-Minbar Jihadi Media Network, a militant Islamist Web site, says it wants Muslims to stage attacks in France and on French interests elsewhere in support of Muslims in Central African Republic and Mali.
“Supporting them is an easy matter for every honest and loyal person, because the embassies of France fill the lands of the Muslims, not to mention the lions of our Ummah [nation] who live in the West,” it said in a message introducing the latest campaign, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.
On its online forum, it posted 22 posters, a video, an article, and a poem, adding to the campaign it began earlier this month urging terror attacks in France and for Hollande’s killing.
“To our lone wolves in France, assassinate the president of disbelief and criminality, terrify his cursed government, and bomb them and scare them as a support to the vulnerable in the Central African Republic,” the March 9 message read. “Neither Hollande, nor his soldiers will know peace in France as long as the Muslims of Mali and the Central African Republic cannot live properly in their country.”
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