E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Le Pen in sight of regional election triumph in Frankistan
There are many grounds for mistrusting Jean-Marie Le Pen, but electoral prediction is not generally among them. When he hazards a guess the veteran leader of France’s far right is rarely wrong. And this, he said yesterday, is the most winnable election of all his long career.

Even his opponents agree that next spring’s regional polls, the first since the presidential and parliamentary elections last year which produced the biggest upset in the country’s postwar political history, will probably give the pugnacious National Front president his greatest chance yet of a historic victory.

"I see things very clearly," he said yesterday, formally beginning his campaign for the presidency of the Provence, Alpes and CÃŽte d’Azur (Paca) region before a battery of TV cameras in a chartered yacht replete with champagne and canapes in the Baie des Anges, off Nice. "I am confident that here, finally, we will emerge as the winners of a three-way battle."
And remember, death is not an option: Le Pen or Chirac. Discuss.
Many observers think Mr Le Pen may be right. The anti-immigrant Front has come close to controlling France’s 20 regional councils before, notably at the last polls in 1998, when several conservative council presidents tried to make ultimately unsuccessful deals with far-right leaders in an effort to retain their seats. This time its chances of winning an outright victory, particularly in its heartlands in eastern and southern France, may be even better.

The Socialist party is still reeling from the events of last year, when their boneheaded presidential candidate, Lionel Jospin, was knocked out by Mr Le Pen, and their government humiliated by nearly everyone a landslide conservative victory in parliamentary polls.

The early flush of Jean-Pierre Raffarin’s centre-right government has faded, and its approval rating is falling steadily on issues such as its allegedly inept handling of this summer’s heatwave and its unpopular reforms of state pensions, the civil service and the national health system.
Inept French government? But they train their young people for this!
Nowhere is the risk of the Front gaining its first taste of serious power higher than in Paca, where Mr Le Pen won a record 28% of the vote in the second round of last year’s presidential election. Unemployment there, at 11.5%, is more than two points higher than the national average, encouraging support for the far-right.

Thierry Mariani, a conservative MP who has successfully fought off Front challenges in his southern constituency Vaucluse, said the prospects of Mr Le Pen becoming regional president - with control over a large budget for economic development, education, transport and culture - were "terrifyingly real". "Here the Front can count on as many votes as both the right and the left," he said. "It would of course be a catastrophe: every regional decision would be politicised."
"Instead of being left to people like me!"
Mr Mariani knows what he is talking about. In the four southern French town halls it has controlled, Orange, Vitrolles, Marignane and Toulon, the Front has not hesitated to implement its policies of national preference for French citizens in jobs, housing and social benefits, and to promote "traditional" French culture. Subsidies have been withdrawn from rap and ethnic musicians and from festivals which showed gay movies; cultural centres which held "non-French" events have been closed; schools stopped from offering special meals to Jewish and Muslim children; municipal libraries banned from subscribing to leftwing publications.

Michel Vauzelle, the current Socialist president of the regional council, is equally pessimistic. "There’s a very big risk," he said. "Neither the left nor the right can win by saying, ’If the worst comes to the worst, we’ll merge to keep out the Front.’ That would hand them victory on a plate."

Blinking in the sun on the deck of the Star CÃŽte d’Azur yesterday, Mr Le Pen brimmed with an unaccustomed confidence. "True, the president of a region does not have the same powers as the president of the republic," he said. "But victory here will send a very, very strong signal. ... After the earthquake of the presidential elections, it will mark the beginning of fundamental change for France."
Le Pen kicks over the first domino, and the radical Muslims in the cities do the rest.
Posted by: Steve White 2003-09-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=18867