Posted on 06/21/2002 8:05:54 PM PDT by Asmodeus
French voters sent the Socialists and their Communist and Green party allies packing in the final round of elections last Sunday. The first two rounds of elections resulted in the Socialists not even making it into the final runoff election for the French Presidency. That in turn saw incumbent President Jacques Chirac in the second round being re-elected by the largest margin in modern French history.
Then came the parliamentary elections. The Socialists and their allies have had control of the last two sessions of parliament and for the past five years have had to share power with Chirac. This time voters gave Chirac's center-right coalition a huge margin in the parliament. Now he should be able to enact any legislation he wishes.
What happened in France follows similar results in Spain, in Italy (where the center-right holds a solid majority in both houses of parliament for the first time since just after World War II), in Austria and even in Denmark and Norway. Moreover the CDU-CSU coalition is currently leading the incumbent Socialists in the polls for the September elections in Germany.
In Great Britain, Tony Blair was re-elected last year or he too might be caught up in this shift to the right. After September he might stand alone among the major European nations with his center-left government. The voters seem willing to give conservatives one more chance to try to govern.
Of course some of the reaction of the voters has to do with the relatively bad economic times in the various countries of the European Union. Still the profound shift, which these astonishing elections reflect, has been more culturally based than rooted in economics. In every one of these elections, immigration and the resulting crime from immigrants who refuse to integrate into their new nations have been the dominant issues. The Socialists were not only unwilling to deal with these issues, their policies were seen as fostering the problems in the first place.
The right of center parties made their usual promises about creating jobs and cutting taxes. This time, however, the chief spokesmen for the conservatives promised to crack down on crime and to reform immigration laws. France has been so liberal in its immigration policies that at least ten percent (some estimates run as high as a third) of the nation belongs to Islam. Voters have begun to be fearful.
Whether or not the victorious center-right parties will now actually have the political will to act on these issues remains to be seen. Voters are becoming more and more cynical about the ability of political parties to keep their promises. Voter turnout in Sunday's election in France was the lowest since the Second World War.
If the center-right parties actually produce some meaningful results, they might well usher in a new era of conservative governance in Europe that could provide a model for the rest of the world. If they fail to produce, and given the fact that the left is seen to have already failed, it could mean the end of democratic government as it has been practiced on the European continent for the past half century.
Failure of the center-right might well bring about a new era of dictatorships or even in several places in Eastern Europe, perhaps a restoration of the monarchy. Voters today are more serious about expecting results than at any time in the modern era.
If democracy won't solve their problems they are ready to look to alternative forms of government.
And it may be more serious than that. Failure of these center-right parties to act could mean the end of the nation-state itself. If national governments led by conservatives fail to produce results, citizens will turn to ethnic groups, religions, families or tribes. Similarly, more regional separatist movements are likely to arise.
Just how Chirac's new government (and the other center-right governments mentioned) deals with the immigration issue will be most instructive to watch. That is an issue that will soon be on the doorstep of the United States. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO), the leader of the immigration caucus in the House, is locking horns with President George W. Bush over how to handle the immigration question.
What Europe does may be revealing to both Bush and Tancredo. Believe it or not, there are actually Tancredo for President bumper stickers floating about the body politic. In this past century it has been the United States that has often led Europe in political trends. Who knows, this time the situation may be reversed. If so, Tancredo will become a household name. Won't that surprise the rest of the world?
A million moose a day from Canada and even more Mexicans without coming through embassies or consulates which is useless anyway like the Saudi Instant approval hotline,ins letting Pakistanis go walkabouts,still not found,cops letting people go because we're closed for the weekend and trained killer citizens of theirs here on worker programmes as revealed here on FR...your right its a war on terror,Id be terrified to have to follow instructions from whatever idiot runs the show...good luck...if you visit bring tobacco and bourbon.
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