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Sarkozy facing debacle in second round of regional vote

Other News Materials 19 March 2010 13:24 (UTC +04:00)
The only suspense in Sunday's second round of French regional elections appears to be whether the opposition Socialists score a "Grand Slam" by winning every one of the country's 26 regions.
Sarkozy facing debacle in second round of regional vote

The only suspense in Sunday's second round of French regional elections appears to be whether the opposition Socialists score a "Grand Slam" by winning every one of the country's 26 regions, DPA reported.

According to polls, President Nicolas Sarkozy and his ruling centre-right UMP have only one chance to avoid a humiliating shut-out, and that is in Alsace, where the Socialist and UMP candidates are running neck and neck.

But even if the UMP suffer a debacle, it appears that their strategy will be - as it was after last Sunday's first round - to claim that the results are not important because of the low voter turnout, the importance of local issues and the irrelevance of regional governments to the voters.

This spin - which was laid out by Sarkozy's advisers and slavishly followed by every minister, junior minister and spokesperson after the first round - was harshly criticized by fellow conservatives, who delicately accused Sarkozy's camp of being out of touch with reality.

True, the abstention rate in the first round was a record 53.5 per cent, but according to a poll taken immediately after the vote, about 30 per cent of those who stayed away did so as a protest against the government. That's nearly 7 million voters.

The poll also found that, while a majority of the voters cast their ballots on the basis of local issues, a full one-third voted to protest against Sarkozy's policies. That's another 6.5 million voters.

If the poll was in any way accurate, it means that some 13.5 million French voters used the first round of the regional elections to register their unhappiness with Sarkozy and his government.

The strategy of Sarkozy and his allies in the week separating the two rounds has been to play what used to be the concervatives' electoral trump card: law and order.

The murder on Tuesday of a policeman by a group of ETA militants near Paris gave them a pretext. Sarkozy used the occasion of a visit to the man's family to push for harsher punishments for cop-killers.

And Prime Minister Francois Fillon cited another policeman killed in the line of duty, beaten to death while carrying out a routine passenger control. Except that the policeman had not been killed, and was recovering from his wounds in hospital even as Fillon spoke.

The blunder, followed by an abject apology, conveyed the impression that the UMP were desperately trying to avoid a debacle. And it also suggested that they were either not aware of, or were simply ignoring, the main issue in the election: the economy.

With unemployment at 10 per cent and predicted to rise farther, a large majority of the French have simply lost faith in the government's economic policies.

The Socialists and their left-wing allies, on the other hand, spent the week forging an alliance that could have important consequences, not only for Sunday, but also for the presidential election of 2012.

For the first time in many years, the main opposition Socialists, the pro-environment Europe Ecology party and the Left Front, which includes the Communists, were able to display broad unity.

In most regions, they formed joint slates of candidates, even though in many cases Europe Ecologie received the necessary 10 per cent of the vote in the first round to stand again on Sunday.

That was the case in Alsace. And the Socialists are hoping it will serve as a model for 2012, when a unified left-wing alliance, forged during these regional elections, evicts Sarkozy from the Elysee Palace.

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