Adieu, European Left

The huge victory of President Jacques Chirac's center-right coalition yesterday in the French parliamentary elections confirms that France is but the latest European country to reject the left. Voters let it be known that they don't want more of what they've had in the past five years: a mandatory 35-hour work week; an attempt to export such rules to the rest of the European Union; and an anti-Americanism out of place with the reality of trans-Atlantic partnership on many key issues.

Yesterday's elections also reflect the wide chasm between the chattering classes and the majority of the French people. The French farmer and his rural neighbors are hard working and thrifty. They like shooting and fishing and enjoy eating the bloated liver of a goose. When a Gaullist leader said recently that "cows don't give milk only 35 hours a week," she was speaking to that France.

That was also the France that President Chirac craftily reached for in naming a regional leader, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, as Prime Minister after Socialist Lionel Jospin resigned from politics following his failure at the polls in April. The differences between the two men could not be more glaring. While his predecessor had graduated from the prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration and was a fixture of Paris political circles since the 1970s, Mr. Raffarin was little known outside his region and is everywhere described as "avuncular."

As yesterday's vote shows, the ordinary French voter is much more in touch with the way the rest of the world has evolved than your typical Left Bank cafe habitue. He belongs to the France that produces wealth -- the other belongs to the France that consumes it. The one is reliant on imports and exports and economic growth; the France of civil servants is out to defend their sinecures.

It isn't surprising that the Chirac-Raffarin government has promised to cut income taxes by a third, to lower the Value Added Tax for restaurants, to cut red tape, to "liberate energies," to get serious about crime, and not to raise the minimum wage again. All this goes some way to explain what happened yesterday in France. Next Sunday, in the second round elections for the National Assembly, the French will make their final decision between these two Frances. The choice seems clear at this point.

Also see Chirac's Party Aims for Control by Elaine Ganley.

Chirac's Party Aims for Control

By ELAINE GANLEY : Associated Press Writer
Jun 10, 2002 : 3:32 pm ET

PARIS (AP) -- France's mainstream political right, fresh from a resounding win in the first round of parliamentary elections, got to work Monday trying to clinch an absolute majority in next week's runoff -- and a massive power base for President Jacques Chirac.

Sunday's first-round results sketched out a new political landscape for France, with Chirac's Gaullists and their centrist allies poised to give the president the control he long has sought.

The outcome apparently reflected voter distaste for another power-sharing arrangement between Chirac and a leftist-dominated National Assembly, the lower house of parliament.

The left, which helped return Chirac to office last month when he defeated extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, now is trying to convince voters who stayed away from Sunday's polls in record numbers -- nearly 35 percent -- to cast ballots in the second round.

The Socialist former defense minister, Alain Richard, asked voters to at least give the left a "significant minority" in parliament.

If projections are correct, the Socialists may be shorn of any prominent role in politics after nearly two decades at the helm, either in the presidency or in government.

Such a prospect spread palpable fear among the left.

"It's one thing to have a majority and another to have all the power," Laurent Fabius, a former prime minister and finance minister, said on France-Info radio. "Balance is needed in a democracy."

But there is little chance France will transform itself abruptly, even under a powerful right-led government. France covets its social safety net and is wary of unleashing free-market forces.

Chirac has promised an across-the-board 5 percent tax cut and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government is implementing its law-and-order campaign to combat rising crime.

However, the president has said he would leave intact the shortened 35-hour work week -- the leftist government's flagship legislation -- while easing its burden on businesses.

With all first-round votes counted except overseas ballots, Chirac's allies received nearly 43.4 percent of the vote in the race for the 577-seat chamber. The left -- which controlled the National Assembly for five years -- received 36.1 percent.

The results also showed voters' decisions to cast "useful votes" in the first round and sideline extremist candidates -- both on the right and left -- who helped turn the presidential election into a duel between Chirac and Le Pen.

Le Pen's National Front, which was feared for its power as a spoiler, was all but trounced Sunday, earning 11.3 percent of votes compared with nearly 15 percent in the 1997 legislative race. Le Pen himself scored almost 17 percent in the first round of the presidential vote.

The anti-immigration party will be present in the runoff in only 37 of the 577 districts -- compared with 131 districts in the 1997 parliamentary election.

Raffarin said he would be on the road this week to support candidates.

The right's strategies included forming the Union for the Presidential Majority party, which combined Chirac's Gaullists and most centrists.

Raffarin, a reassuring, provincial politician brought to Paris to head the government after Chirac's presidential victory, also counterbalanced Chirac's damaged image from various scandals plaguing his first term in office.

The right could win 392-427 seats in the new parliament, according to the Ipsos polling firm. That's compared with the 245 it holds in the outgoing parliament.

The left could win 150-191 seats, compared with the 314 it now holds. Five deputies were not allied with either side and 13 seats were empty.

The extreme right could get up to two seats.

The daily newspaper Le Monde said Chirac and his political cohorts would have an "unprecedented concentration of power" should they repeat their first-round performance in the runoff.

The right would control the National Assembly, the Senate, regional governments and bodies like the Constitutional Council and the High Audiovisual Council.

"Never in our recent political history has there been, to the benefit of one person, such an alignment of the planets of our system," Le Monde wrote.

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