Main French parties have little to celebrate in far-right’s defeat

PARIS — The far-right National Front's (FN) drubbing in French regional elections gives little cause for celebration for the two main parties with less than 18 months to go until the presidential election, observers said Monday.

The anti-immigration party's hopes of winning control of a region for the first time in its history were dashed on Sunday as voters turned out in force and switched their support to the centre-right Republicans and the Socialists of President Francois Hollande.

Despite being relegated to third place, the FN recorded its best-ever electoral score with 6.8 million votes.

The party's leader Marine Le Pen blasted the blocking tactics of the main parties and told supporters: "Nothing can stop us now."

"By tripling our number of councillors, we will be the main opposition force in most of the regions of France," she said.

The FN had led in six of 13 regions after the first round on December 6, propelled by anger over the moribund economy and fears sparked by last month's jihadist attacks in Paris that left 130 dead.

But on Sunday, the centre-right alliance of former president Nicolas Sarkozy took seven regions and the ruling Socialists won five as more than 58 per cent of voters cast their ballots.

Key to the victory over the FN was the Socialists' decision to withdraw their candidates in the northern region where Le Pen was standing and in the south where her 26-year-old niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen led the FN list. 

That avoided diluting the vote and gave the centre-right candidates a clear run.

'Dam will break' 

Political analyst Stephane Rozes of the CAP think tank said the FN could not be contained forever.

"The dam has held for the time being but the FN is making consistent progress in this country and at some point, the dam is going to break," he said.

The contrast with the first round of voting on December 6 was stark — Marine Le Pen scored just over 42 per cent in the economically depressed Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie compared to nearly 58 per cent for her centre-right rival Xavier Bertrand.

Yet in the first round she had scored 15 per cent more than her rival.

In Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur on the south coast, the younger Le Pen was beaten by her centre-right rival by more than 10 per cent, despite having a clear lead in the first round.

A former conservative prime minister, Francois Fillon, warned that Sunday's results "cannot wipe away December 6, which remains the true barometer of  the state of the country".

The left-leaning Liberation newspaper said in an editorial it was fear of the far-right which had mobilised the left, rather than any renewed enthusiasm for the Socialists.

The Catholic newspaper La Croix said in its editorial: "If answers are not found to French people's concerns, the National Front will continue its progression until the presidential election."

Le Pen is still likely to use the FN's performance as a springboard for her bid for the presidency in 2017.

Polls last week showed she would win the most votes in the first round of that election. But like on Sunday, she is likely to face large-scale opposition in the decisive run-off.

Her father and the FN's co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen rocked the French establishment by reaching the second round of the 2002 presidential election but was defeated by Jacques Chirac as voters threw their support behind the mainstream candidate.

Sarkozy responded to the elections by removing an outspoken critic, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, from the leadership of the Republicans, with an eye on his own ambitions to win back the presidency.

"We need a new team," Sarkozy told reporters. "We prefer that the party's leaders talk about the party's policy positions and not other things."

Kosciusko-Morizet, a former Paris mayoral candidate, responded angrily, saying: "Eliminating people just as a debate is being launched is an old Stalinist idea."

She had been particularly angry at Sarkozy's refusal to do any deals with the Socialists in the regional elections to prevent the FN from getting into power.