France’s far-right soars in vote, joins mainstream parties
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — France’s options are no longer as simple as left and right. The far-right, anti-establishment National Front party has ridden a wave of anger over migration and extremist attacks straight into the political mainstream — where experts predict it will stay. The party’s historic results in this past Sunday’s first round of regional elections were the latest in a series of electoral inroads, with scores that shamed and destabilized the traditional parties. The conservative party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy and President François Hollande’s Socialists were scrambling to find ways to block the ascent of the far right before the final round this Sunday. The showing of the National Front, which won six of 13 regions, will dynamize leader Marine Le Pen’s planned bid for the presidency in 2017. In the traditionally Socialist northeastern region where she was running, the party won more than 40 percent of the vote. Her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, had a similar showing in the southeastern Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, a stronghold of the traditional right. In a bid to stop a second-round National Front victory, the Socialist Party ordered its candidates to withdraw in those two regions so that their supporters could give their votes to conservative candidates, a bitter exercise that Prime Minister Manuel Valls said was necessary. “There is a choice between two visions of France,” Valls said Monday night on the TV station TF1 — that of traditional parties and that of the extreme right. Opponents say the National Front criticizes without offering solutions. The party, which has four lawmakers in Parliament, is opposed to the European Union and the euro currency and fears that Muslim immigrants will supplant French civilization. Le Pen says her party is one of patriots — a message with special resonance in France since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130. Le Pen replaced her father, party co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011. She immediately set about changing the party’s anti-Semitic image to make it less toxic to voters and undo its pariah status. Experts widely held that a vote for the party, particularly under Jean-Marie Le Pen, was merely a way for people to punish mainstream parties. Leading far-right expert Jean-Yves Camus said that he no longer believes a vote for the National Front is a protest vote. “When a political party . . . keeps going through the glass ceiling, you cannot say it is uniquely a protest party,” Camus said. Now, he said, voters are sticking to the party. “We are incontestably in a country that has a perfect tri-party system,” he added. The far-right’s long-standing calls for France to increase security and lock its doors to immigrants, especially Muslims, dovetailed this year with two assaults by Islamist extremists and the continuing influx of migrants to Europe. Far-right parties have made inroads across Europe in recent years, including in Greece, Hungary, Austria and the Netherlands. Le Pen heads a powerful far-right group in the European Parliament. All are feeding on the migrant crisis. Le Pen attributes her party’s high scores to the nature of the political class and the system it defends. “I believe that the National Front’s incredible results are the revolt of the people against the elite,” she said Monday on RTL radio. “The people no longer support the disdain they have been [subjected to] for years by a political class defending its own interests.” Analysts say that despite the strong showing, the National Front is not guaranteed a win in the final round of voting. “The National Front is an excellent first-round party,” Camus said. More difficult is “transforming itself into pole position in round two.” But no one questions the falling away of the far-right stigma. “I know more and more people who vote for the National Front, people that I know and that I meet,” said Migael Lalor, 44, a Paris resident. “Voting for the National Front is now something almost ordinary,” he said, adding that the party still inspires “dread” and “fear” in him. — Associated Press |