All Change in France as Socialists Brace for Vote Slap
France's political world is braced for a shake-up this weekend with a second round of nationwide local elections set to result in heavy losses for the ruling Socialists and breakthrough advances by the far right.
President Francois Hollande is tipped to react by ordering a cabinet reshuffle that could see Barcelona-born Interior Minister Manuel Valls installed as Prime Minister.
Anne Hidalgo, another child of immigrants who was born near Cadiz in southern Spain, is a narrow favorite to become the first female mayor of Paris.
Hidalgo, a Socialist whose campaign has been hampered by the unpopularity of her party, is engaged in a tight battle with another woman, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, a former minister for the center-right UMP party, to become one of only a handful of female mayors of major cities around the world.
The far-right National Front (FN) meanwhile could claim control of 10 or more mid-sized towns after a better-than-expected showing in the March 23 first round of voting.
The FN's success and the lowest turnout ever in municipal elections have been seen as signs of disenchantment with Hollande's administration and a reshuffle is regarded as inevitable in the aftermath of the vote.
"There will be consequences to be drawn as soon as the second round is over," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius acknowledged this week.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is expected to be made the scapegoat for the poor results and Valls, the government's most popular figure, is favorite to replace him.
A poll by research firm Harris Interactive found that more than three-quarters of those questioned wanted a new prime minister after the second round.
There have also been reports that Hollande is seeking to ramp up the pro-business credentials of his government by bringing veteran industrialist Louis Gallois or former World Trade Organization director Pascal Lamy into the cabinet.
Hollande told his ministers on Wednesday that they needed to "learn a lesson" from the Socialists' poor showing in the first round.
But a new hike in unemployment, which saw the number of jobless rise to 3.34 million in February, has kept the government on the defensive and reduced the chances of the party recovering ground on Sunday.
"We're on track for a big defeat for the left," said Brice Teinturier of polling group Ipsos.
The far-right, meanwhile, is surfing the wave of discontent and the FN is poised to claim its biggest-ever foothold in local government.
In the first round, the party led by Marine Le Pen took five percent of the nationwide vote -- up from 0.9 percent in the first round of the last municipal polls in 2008 -- despite only being able to field candidates in a minority of municipalities.
Where it did present lists, the FN performed better than expected, even claiming the mayor's seat in one town, Henin-Beaumont in northern France, at the first attempt with just over 50 percent of the vote.
Le Pen is hoping to see FN-backed mayors installed in at least another dozen towns on Sunday evening.
The party has controlled a handful of local authorities, including the major port of Toulon, in the past. But their administrations were frequently tainted by allegations of mismanagement and cronyism which led to voters kicking them out at the first opportunity.
Le Pen, who has made strenuous efforts to forge a new, more respectable image for the party founded by her father Jean-Marie, claims the FN has matured in terms of the quality of its candidates for office.
"The only glass ceiling we have not broken through is being able to show what we are capable of doing," she says in an interview with Saturday's edition of Le Monde.
"What we lack at the moment is a positive report card. That is important. With that we can move to a higher level."
Le Pen, who took over the FN leadership in 2011, has been credited with broadening the appeal of a party regarded as taboo by many voters in light of her father's repeated convictions for Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred.
The best-known city that could fall to the FN is Avignon, famed for its annual international theater festival.
Festival's director Olivier Py has warned that the high-profile event will quit the city if the FN wins.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://test.naharnet.com/stories/en/124281 |