CHIRAC, SARKOZY The French Right prepares for presidentials

The Communist Party, declared finally dead after its presidential candidate Marie-George Buffet got a disastrous 1,9% of the vote, is alive again.

In the first round of the parliamentary elections, it already did noticeably better with 4,3%. But it was still predicted to see its share of seats halved - it had 21 deputies in the last parliament, which was going to go down to 9-14.

Instead, it looks as if they'll remain almost stable. Currently projected at 18 seats.

Mind you, still means they'll lack the numbers to form a proper parliamentary group (threshold: 20), which will cost them significantly in finances and publicity.

An analysis in Le Monde submits that the much-better-than-expected score of the Socialists is due mostly to voters of Bayrou's MoDem switching to the left in the second round.

Whereas the Socialist Party had staked its fate on a strong mobilisation of leftwing voters who stayed at home in the first round - which the article points out did not take place - it seems that in fact it was rather the voters of MoDem that have been behind the good performance of the opposition.

According to an election night poll, 55% of those who voted for a MoDem candidate in the first round (almost all of whom were eliminated), voted for the left in the second round, and just 28% voted for the right.

The article cites Juppé's case as a striking example: he had a ten-point lead in the first round, but was beaten by his Socialist opponent anyway, largely thanks to crossover MoDem voters.

It also notes that allies of Segolene Royal seem to have benefited especially, reflecting the spat among Socialists between the two rounds over whether to offer co-operation with Bayrou's party or not (Sego was in favour, Hollande and most of the other party "elephants" were against).

Nimh, Walter,

Thanks for the information & links. It appears Sarkozy will have an ample majority for legislation but not enough for major constitutional changes. Still, the result appears to represent a significant change in the political trajectory of France.

I am quite pleased especially with the ample victory of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (or DSK) in his district. Not because I like the man who spearheads the effort to "social-democratise" the Socialist Party (read: move it rightward) - I dont. But because his opponent was an idiot.

His conservative challenger was a former TV presenter. She was on a jury of a literary prize this week, and her fellow-jurators were surprised to hear her say that DSK may be quite a seductive man, "but my husband can sleep peacefully - in my district it's all just Arabs and blacks, and the idea of sleeping with them just disgusts me."

How so?

The presidential elections represented a break, yes. But these ones?

Note: Sarkozy's conservative UMP will have about 30 seats LESS than it had in the outgoing parliament...

Indeed: the conservatives will certainly get fewer than the 359 seats they had in the outgoing parliament.
And the Socialists will get more than the 149 seats they won in the last elections.

Somehow I believe that a Conservative government under President Sarkozy and the PM he appoints will be vastly different from its predecessor under Chirac. Do either of you disagree with that proposition?

I dont know about "vastly" different - conservatives are conservatives. But there'll be a distinct change in style, yes, and definitely in foreign policy, as well as on immigration/integration. He'll certainly try to steer economic policy towards a more starkly liberal/market course as well. Which is why I said that the presidential elections did indeed represent a break, yes.

But you specifically wrote about these here elections - you know, this weekend's parliamentary elections that we're talking about tonight - and you asserted that "the result appears to represent a significant change in the political trajectory of France."

That just doesnt make any sense. How does a result that actually chips some thirty seats off a 300+ seat conservative majority, which otherwise remains in place, represent much of a change - a "significant" change, even - "in the political trajectory of France," no less?

Me thinks that if anything, the French already appear to have gotten slightly cold feet at the "blue wave", and decided that the presidential results were for now already enough in the way of changing political trajectories. So they chose to take a step sidewards for now in these elections instead, actually chipping Sarkozy's revolutionary wings a bit by returning a reduced majority for his party.

Basically, I believe that this response:



represents a bit of a non sequitur when it comes to defending this original assertion:



How do elections that actually present said new "vastly different" Conservative government and Prime Minister with a reduced majority represent "a significant change in the political trajectory of France"?

Are you faulting my logic or my conclusions - or both? Do you believe that the recent elections (plural) did NOT portend a significant change in the political trajectory of France? Do you believe that Sarkozy will work actively to sustain the highly regulated labor markets, government participation in the ownership and management of large corporations, and unsustainable social welfare systems as did Chirac?

Neither of us really knows what will follow the elections, but I note that Sarkozy has indicated rather clearly that, unlike Chirac, he will use his majority to pursue change in these area and many others. I believe he will be at least partly successful in this. However, neither of us knows the future.

From the more prominenz politicans (and know internationally)

- Arno Klarsfeld, Jean-Louis Bruguière, Philippe Bas (UMP), Vincent Peillon (PS), Jean-Pierre Chevènement and Georges Sarre (MRC), Marine Le Pen (FN) didn't male it,

- while François Hollande, Laurent Fabius, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Jean-Louis Bianco, Pierre Moscovici, Jean Glavany, Arnaud Montebourg (PS), Yves Cochet (Verts) et Christiane Taubira (PRG) were elected or re-elected.

How the assemblée national will look like according to the final results:




I agree, George, that no-one really knows what will follow the elections.

But the French clearly gave the opposition status to the left.
And it really is a great surprise (at least for me) that the Socialists got 100% more seats as was predicted before.

It's a "Yes, but ..." for Sarkozy as 'Le Figaro' called it on today's frontpage:

Well, first of all I'm faulting you for ignoring my two responses to you - it doesnt seem like you heard my point at all, and so you just repeat yourself instead?

But on the issue, I am faulting you for a) fuzzing up your original assertion, and b) basically ignoring last night's result in your analysis.

Re: a) - you had said, quite clearly and plainly: "It appears Sarkozy will have an ample majority for legislation .. Still, the result appears to represent a significant change in the political trajectory of France."

Obviously, this whole sentence refers to these parliamentary elections - you know, the ones that took place when we were posting, and the ones we were discussing. The result, you wrote - singular.

To, when you're called on this assertion being counterfactual, revert to saying you were talking about these "recent elections (plural)" is disingenuous.


Re: b):

First, I know you dislike Chirac, but in your eagerness to make it seem like the elections represent a kind of regime change, you overstate your case. He was, after all, the leader of the country's conservative party, however much you like to pretend that he was some kind of leftie, and that Sarkozy's election thus marks a change of political sides.

Chirac did not "work actively to sustain" the highly regulated labor markets etc. For one thing, because like Mitterand in his later years, he largely confined himself to foreign policy, leaving the implementation of domestic socio-economics mostly in the hands of the Prime Minister - a French tradition of sorts.

Secondly, because aside from the period in which he had to cohabit with a Socialist Prime Minister, during his tenure he did have his PMs trying to implement market-oriented reforms.

All you can blame him for, from your political perspective, is not pushing through, and letting his PMs flounder as soon as they encountered any organised resistance of significance on the street or from the unions, students etc. "Too cowardly" to push through reform, yes, that would work from your POV. But an active opponent of it, no.

Thats not my beef here, though.

My beef is that you summarise the result (singular) of this parliamentary elections as "a significant change in the political trajectory of France". That doesnt make any sense. Its like you act as if they didnt take place at all, and just repeat your conclusion about the presidential elections instead.

I mean, seriously: how can you assert that the French voters actually decreasing the parliamentary majority that Sarkozy will have to work with, "a significant change in the political trajectory of France" in his direction?

Compare, instead, the conclusions drawn in some of today's media headlines:

Sarkozy majority hit by resurgent left

France's Sarkozy wins poll despite resurgent left

Sarkozy to Push French Tax Cuts as Majority Shrinks (Update2)

Sarkozy fails to win landslide

Sarkozy Party Wins, but Not in Landslide

French Conservatives Win; Socialists Make Gains

Sarkozy, Allies Hold Majority, Lose Seats

Setback for Sarkozy in parliamentary elections

Nicolas Sarkozy est contraint de revoir sa stratégie (Sarkozy is forced to review his strategy)

Does this sound like "a significant change in the political trajectory of France" to you?

I'd rather translate it as the conditionalising, the weakening, of the change that was heralded in the presidential elections. Or, as I wrote:

Well you have me on a point of grammar. I did write election (singular), when in fact I had in mind the net result of the two, closely-spaced elections. I used the plural in my subsequent reference to clarify the matter, not to hide an error in argument. You may chose to believe or reject that as you wish, but it is the truth.

My impression of Chirac's rhetoric regarding the French social welfare system is that he considered it a permanent thing, a noble feature of the French society, and that he opposed any significant changes to it. You suggest that he was, instead merely busy with other things. The fact is he didn't act to modify it in the face of compelling reasons to do so. He even pulled the rug out from under his PM following student resistence to even trivial modifications to employment regulations designed to stimulate the entry of young people into the work force.

It seems to me that, though he was the head of the consdervative party in France, neither in his rhetoric nor in his actions did he pursue a conservative policy.

Allright. I dont get why you didnt pick up on my response the first time round and initially just repeated your point, ignoring the objection, but sure, in good faith it was.

So has the result of these parliamentary elections made any impact on your assessment of the situation? Or do you basically maintain the analysis you already offered after the presidential elections, tout court? The news headlines seem to echo my suggestion that such conclusions need to be at least conditionalised now.


Depends on how you define "conservative". Originally, conservatives were not too keen on capitalism, globalisation and the market economy, as they threw the existing order upside down, whereas the conservatives wanted to, well, conserve it. Compared to the preceding more feudal systems, capitalism brought social mobility, and it also greatly expanded the scale of things, which uprooted existing communities and their time-tested (or -worn) structures - much to the conservatives' consternation.

OK, so we dont live in the 18th or 19th century anymore, and things and terminologies have changed enormously, obviously.

But in much of Europe, at least, conservatism isnt quite as eponymously (argh, how do you spell that) wedded to the celebration of capitalism and the market as it is in the US. For sure, most conservative parties are champions of the market economy compared to their leftwing opponents. But there is also enough of an inbuilt cautiousness that the term "conservatism" implies, enough of a conservative tenet that one should respect the social structures and communities as they have organically grown as an autonomous value, enough to create wariness of all too drastic change.

In Holland, one of the three parties that in the seventies merged into a new Christian-democratic party was called the "Anti-Revolutionary Party". It was our most consistently conservative party, and opposed any attempt to drastically remake society, whichever side it came from - whether it was red (socialist) or brown (fascist). The Anti-Revolutionaries would not, by and large, have approved of the Thatcherite revolution, for example - as some old-fashioned Tories did not, either.

Instead, major European conservative icons like Adenauer and De Gaulle have been leading figures in creating something like a welfare state in the beginning.

Well, you know all that.

It is this more old-fashioned, pre-Reaganite, pre-Thatcherite character that many European conservative parties still preserve to some extent that has left the space in the political debate for a third main current. Aside from the socialist/social-democratic/labour current and the christian-democratic/conservative current, many countries here have a liberal current of secular bent, which vociferously pushes a free market agenda in a way that mainstream christian-democrats/conservatives sometimes shy away from.

In Germany, for example, you have the Free Democrat FDP playing that role. The reason why became clear in the last elections: when Christian-Democratic leader Angela Merkel appeared to all too enthusiastically embrace a radical market identity (flat tax and the like), she was immediately rebuffed by the voter: her party dropped in the polls, she sacked her economic adviser, and steering to the center managed to just salvage a few points lead against the SPD, where she'd long seemed to head for a landslide.

In this respect, much of Europe is different from the US, where the conservative party, the Republicans, has always also been the more capitalist one, the representative of business and market interest.

In Eastern Europe the "old" interpretation of what conservatism is about still reverberates in particular.

In countries like Poland and Hungary, it is an alliance of liberals and social-democrats (the former communist apparatchiks) that are seen to be the more enthusiastic pushers for market liberalisation, privatisation etc. This is associated with "Westernness", and secular culture. The conservative parties, on the other hand, insist on an agenda of national pride, religiosity and a degree of cultural and economic protectionism, which automatically comes with a rejection of too much capitalism, with criticism of those EU-imposed market reforms.

In Serbia too, it is Kostunica's moderately nationalist DSS that is considered the conservative party, as opposed to the pro-EU, pro-market, pro-reform Democratic Party of President Tadic that is considered the "liberal" one.

In this historical tradition and European context, one could well say that Chirac was more of a classic conservative than Sarkozy is, with his radical plans to remake France and upset all that is part of the status quo. Chirac was never a Thatcherite, obviously, and Sarkozy is, to some extent. But in a way Chirac was the "real" conservative, the traditional conservative.

He even had the corruption scandals to go with it

The big hit in Europe meanwhile is the tipsy Sarkozy at the G8-summit's pressconference ...


YouTube link

The big news in France is Segolene Royal booting out Mr. Hollande after 30 years and 4 children >


http://www.lexpress.fr/info/quotidien/actu.asp?id=12098

> following his affair with some other woman.

Well, they weren't married, and even if - according to French and other international media it's more a politcal thing.

Apropos, anyone heard anything - like her whereabout - of Mrs. Sarkozy recently?

nimh,

I understand your points about the historical (i.e. post WWII) policies of continental "conservatives"with respect to market economies and social welfare programs. My opinion is that these are a result of the massive relocation of populations and the attendant human suffering that occurred in the post war era as new governments were being set up across the continent. European governments fom 1914 until 1945 were seen as having created so much human suffering that the first imperative of government in the new era was the protection of the social and economic welfare of their people - particularly following the massive relocation of populations that followed WWII.

However, I also bellieve the essential point relative to our conversation is that Sarkozy has rather clearly stated his belief that much of this must change to enable France to cope with present economic and demographic conditions - we and France have entered a new era. In this his objectives are profoundly different from those of Chirac - even though both are members of the same political party. Thus the fact that both are "conservatives" isn't particularly relevant.

It may well be that, following the election of a President who promised decisive change, the French voters chose to moderate the force of his mandate and enhance the legislative power of his opposition. However, I suspect this hasn't changed any of Sarkozys calculations and objectives.

I seriously doubt that.

Quite funny to read from you "we and France have entered a new era", but European parties are quite different from your Republican/Democrat thingies.

Sarkozy can (nearly) do what he wants - if he doesn't get the support of his party .... members, he's out.

And it really was more than only a shot across the bows that he has do reshuffle his cabinet now due to the 'loss' of Juppé!

The "best of us", in Chirac's words, missed his election and consequently resigned from mayor of Bordeaux..

How nice! Especially that he was one of Sarkozy's best choices...