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France’s National Front tops first round of regional vote
France’s far-right National Front (FN) party rode a wave of fear over immigration and terrorism to storm to a commanding position in the first round of voting in the country’s high-stakes regional elections on Sunday.The anti-immigration party led by Marine Le Pen scored 30.6 percent of the vote nationally, an exit poll by Ifop-Fiducial showed, and now looks on course to take control of at least one French region for the first time in its history once the second round of voting takes place a week from now. The party came ahead of both former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s Les Républicains (formerly the UMP), which earned 27 percent, and President François Hollande’s Socialists, with 22.7 percent, according to the exit poll. In the first national vote since Islamic State group terrorists killed 130 people in a wave of attacks across Paris on November 13, the FN looked set to come first in at least six out of 13 regions, according to exit polls. However, it was in the regions of Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, where Le Pen herself is running, and Provence-Alpes-Côte-d'Azur, where her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen topped the polls, that the FN had its best night. Exit polls showed the FN gaining more than 40 percent in the two regions, in the north and south of the country respectively, well ahead of rival parties. "This is a great result that we welcome with humility, seriousness and a deep sense of responsibility", said Marine Le Pen as she addressed supporters in the town of Hénin-Beaumont in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. “We are without question the first party of France," she added. "We have the vocation to achieve the national unity that the country requires.” Le Pen called on all “patriots” to back her party in the second round and “turn their backs on this political class that deceives them”. Though Le Pen has attempted to steer her party away from some of its more extreme rhetoric of the past, she has been typically uncompromising on the immigration issue. "Feed them, warm them up, and send them back where they came from,” she told reporters earlier this year. Le Pen was quick to associate the attacks with immigration and with refugees fleeing war-torn Syria for Europe. “The Islamic State group keep their promises," Le Pen said in a speech last month. "They vowed to attack, and there were attacks in France. They said there'd be killers among migrants and indeed there were. Politicians here need to open their eyes. There is a link between massive immigration, failure to integrate, and radical Islamism.” Posted by: Steve White 2015-12-07 |
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