BY DICK NICHOLS
In the April 21 first round of France's presidential elections, 2.84 million people (10.44%) voted for far-left candidates, chiefly Lutte Ouvriere (LO) and the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR). On June 9, in the first round of the 577-seat National Assembly elections, these two organisations attracted only 630,000 votes (2.45%). Why?
The collapse of far-left electoral support was due to the pressure on left voters for a "useful vote" against the right, to differences between parliamentary and presidential polls (more a contest of "personalities" than parties) and to LO's rejection of any electoral agreement with the LCR.
However, despite the right's overwhelming victory, which seems certain to produce an absolute majority for President Jacques Chirac after the June 16 second round, most French voters are not convinced of the full-blown, pro-business policies a conservative government is bound to introduce.
The elections were an across-the-board exercise in "lesser evilism". The real "winner" wasn't even on the ballot paper: 35.7% (14.5 million) people couldn't find a good enough reason to even enter the polling booth, the highest abstention rate since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958. Another 1.14 million voted informal. Fifty-six per cent of people under 35 and 60% of those between 18 and 24 simply couldn't be bothered to register an opinion.
Among the 26.4 million who did vote, there was a shift back from the "extremes" towards the mainstream coalitions of parliamentary left and right. The total vote for the right rose from 10.808 million on April 21 to 11.575 million, while the total vote for the "plural left" — the Socialist Party (SP), Communist Party (PCF), Left Republican Party (PRG) and Greens — rose from 7.727 million to 9.407 million.
The vote for the parliamentary centre, chiefly the Republican Pole (formerly the Citizens' Movement) of ex-SP minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement, collapsed from 1.519 million to 300,000. The message of the need for a "useful vote", hammered by mainstream right and left alike, clearly had an impact, as did a certain radicalisation of the mainstream parties' platforms targeted at winning back voters lost during the presidential race.
The total far-right vote fell from 19.2% on April 21 to 12.67%, with 2.332 million votes migrating to Chirac or abstention. Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front (FN) managed to graduate only 37 of its candidates to the second round (those whose vote equalled at least 12.5% of enrolled voters). In 1997, 132 FN candidates reached the second round.
Similarly, on the far left 2.269 million votes were lost and no far-left candidate reached the second round.
The parliamentary right did best in the "useful vote" game because most abstention was at the expense of the previously governing plural left. Its total vote fell to 36.28% from the 42.25% it won in the corresponding round in 1997. This loss was mirrored by the mainstream right's increased vote, to 43.38% from 36.16%.
The reformist left fell victim to the argument that its SP candidate and former prime minister Lionel Jospin had used in his presidential battle with Chirac: the need to end the contradiction of "cohabitation" between a left ruling majority in parliament and a right-wing presidency by removing Chirac. After Jospin's elimination and Chirac's win, the SP's 180-degree switch of line (to argue that the left should be given a majority to "counterbalance" Chirac) sounded unconvincing.
By contrast, Chirac's claim that he should be equipped with a "clear and coherent majority", dramatised by the lightning transformation of his Rally for the Republic into the Union for a Presidential Majority, sounded logical and helped the right acquire an absolute majority in 56 of the 58 seats in the first round.
Inside both mainstream coalitions the pressure for a "useful vote" lifted the vote of the bigger parties at the expense of their smaller allies. Within the plural left, the SP vote increased by 1.4 million and the PCF vote by 256,000, while the PRG's fell by 271,500 and the Greens' by 357,500. Within the right camp the UMP vote was 2.742 million higher than Chirac's first round presidential vote, while the non-Gaullist Union for French Democracy lost more than 700,000 votes.
Return to 'normalcy'?
The French media is now full of relieved talk about a "return to bipolar politics". The first round vote in the presidential poll is being painted as a nightmare exception to the basic trend towards normalcy. This self-serving argument may well be reinforced at the June 16 second round, but it will not hold up in the longer run.
Within the plural left, the PCF, PRG and Greens are facing severely reduced parliamentary representation. The PCF, whose 4.8% was less than half its 1997 vote which harvested 37 MPs, may not even gain the 20 seats needed to form a parliamentary group. The Greens may win four seats (compared to seven in 1997) but will more likely win just one or even none. Forecasts give the PRG five seats.
The result for the SP will depend on how many of its lost millions can be persuaded to vote on June 16. The daily Le Monde predicts that the right should win 359 seats, with 142 going to the left (including 111 SP) and 76 in doubt.
A good turnout on June 16 would mean the SP, with 250 seats in the outgoing parliament, could restrict its losses to an acceptable 70-80 seats. If the abstention rate holds up, however, the SP will be decimated and internal factional tensions, already bubbling over a host of issues, will explode.
Factional warfare is much more advanced within the PCF. Even before June 9 some members, including MPs, were calling for a special congress and the resignation of presidential candidate Robert Hue.
More recently, PCF members have been receiving copies of an unsigned document in which Hue's poor performance is attributed to the party apparatus preventing him from running the radical anti-capitalist campaign he had wanted. The mysterious text also denounces attempts at "transforming what is left of the PCF into the leftish wing of a new left political force which, in the actual state of affairs, could not exist except under social-liberal hegemony".
In short, shell-shocked PCF members are being asked to believe that in the five years of PCF participation in the Jospin government Hue had actually been in opposition to the whole arrangement and that he is the man to return the party to radical anti-capitalist principles!
What alternative?
Despite the media hype, none of the serious forces in French politics, least of all Chirac, really believe that June 9 signals the end of the volatility of the electorate. The president is doing everything to give his looming program of neo-liberal assaults on workers' rights, the public sector and welfare as human a face as possible.
For example, the new prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, appointed by Chirac after victory over Le Pen, is a "serious, nice guy"; his cabinet is made up of "real people" from the provinces; the presidential inauguration was remarkably "modest"; and the movement against neo-liberal globalisation is admitted by Chirac "to have serious concerns".
The spectre haunting the president is a repeat of the massive 1995 upsurge against the last conservative administration of Alain Juppe. No matter how huge the parliamentary majority the electoral system gives him, Chirac knows that he faces social resistance strengthened by the emergence of radical forces in the trade unions and the rising movement against neo-liberal globalisation.
Neither can Chirac bank on the revolutionary left continuing to fail the test of unity needed to give social resistance an adequate political voice. Largely due to the anti-unity stance of LO, the far-left vote collapsed this time around, but the successful LO-LCR campaign in the 1998 European elections is still in everyone's memory and thousands ask why it cannot be repeated.
LO is already paying a price for its recent arrogant self-sufficiency. One of the consolation prizes in what has been a generally disastrous result for the revolutionary left was that LO's vote collapsed more than the LCR's (by 1.328 million as against 881,942) and that the LCR's vote, with fewer candidates (440 compared to 561) exceeded LO's for the first time ever (328,620 votes to 303,288). The LCR's best score was in Paris's 18th arrondissement, where presidential candidate Olivier Besancenot won 5.47% (better than his presidential result), while LO's best result was 3.26%.
LO's line is already stirring internal opposition. The May 17 edition of its weekly newspaper, Lutte Ouvriere, contained an article by two minority leaders, Raoul Glaber and Huguette Chevireau, criticising the organisation's "isolationist" approach. Noting that the far-left vote had more than doubled since 1995, that the LO-LCR campaign in the European elections had been an important step forward, and that LO had a responsibility towards the 3 million who had voted far left, the LO critics ask: "Should our organisation's present fight boil down to trying to prove by our negative example that we are the only ones who are right?"
Dissent within LO has already gone beyond words. During the election campaign 40 members in the southern city of Nimes abandoned LO for the LCR, thereby joining the thousands responding to the LCR's call for the formation of a new anti-capitalist force in French politics.
The last two months in France, marked by the strong presidential poll vote for the far left and the massive street protests against the racist Le Pen, prove that such a force is urgently needed and possible. The sooner it emerges the better the chance of defeating the looming offensive of a ruling elite which is itching to deal a knockout blow to the country's still undefeated working people.
[Dick Nichols is a national executive member of the Democratic Socialist Party and national co-convener of the Socialist Alliance. He recently returned from Europe. During June and July he will be doing a national speaking tour on the theme "Global revolt and the new rise of the left". See the Activist Calendar for details.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, June 19, 2002.
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