French voters delivered a stinging defeat to President Jacques Chirac's government and its program of painful economic reforms in regional elections Sunday that turned into a national vote of censure, exit polls showed. The stunning rebuke, with victories by the opposition left in many regions, will increase pressure on Chirac to reshuffle his conservative government, and perhaps even ditch his prime minister, the unpopular Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
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Exit polls showed the opposition left getting nearly half of the votes, compared with about 37 percent for the right. Turnout was high, with approximately two-thirds of the country's nearly 42 million voters casting ballots, exit polls showed. Raffarin acknowledged the defeat but said reforms are inevitable. "Reforms must continue simply because they are necessary," the somber-looking prime minister said.
For him, the defeat was personal. One of at least eight regions that exit polls estimated were lost by the government included Poitou-Charentes in western France, once Raffarin's fiefdom. The right suffered another high-profile defeat in the central Auvergne region, where former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing was washed away by the wave of wins for the left that swept much of France. The midterm bruising, Chirac's first national test since he and his party swept presidential and legislative elections in 2002, could make it difficult for the government to pursue its promised but unpopular economic reforms. They include trimming spending on the heavily indebted health system. Chirac's European Union partners want his government to rein in France's budget deficit to within EU limits. But French voters showed they are having trouble stomaching the bitter pill of cuts to public services and slimmed down pensions.
The leader of the triumphant Socialists, Francois Hollande, said a mere ministerial shuffle would not be enough to assuage voters, "no matter how big it is." Instead, he said the government must keep its hands off France's treasured public sector.
Former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius called the results "very, very spectacular." "They represent an extremely strong sanction with regard to the president's politics and the current government," he said. Nearly 10 percent unemployment and the stagnant economy fueled voter discontent. Although voters Sunday were choosing regional councils that handle transport, school-building and other local issues, many cast their ballots to show disapproval of the government in Paris. "I feel like France's public sector is being sabotaged," said Elsa Quinette, a theater worker who voted for the left at a polling station in Paris' Montmartre district. "What the government is doing is so serious, I just had to speak out."
For the opposition left, the vote was a triumph, marking its comeback from the political wilderness after Chirac's victories two years ago. "Two years ago, the left was censured in a historic fashion. Today, we've been censured in the same way," said Social Affairs Minister Francois Fillon. Fillon acknowledged that a government shake-up may now be needed. Chirac must "take a new political situation into consideration," he said. But Fillon also said reforms must continue. "Clearly today, we have a problem with the people," he said. But "the consequence must not be immobility and the halting of reforms." By rejuvenating the left, the vote could weaken Chirac's prospects of winning a third presidential term in 2007 should he chose to run again. At the least, the left's new strength in the regions provides platforms from which to mount presidential and legislative campaigns in 2007. "For two years, the president has not responded to French people's expectations," Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former Socialist finance minister, told France-3 television. "From that point of view, it's his failure."
Nothing to get excited about. They're just fighting over who gets the boodle to manage the economy. |
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