France: Parliamentary elections. Voters reject Sarkozy's blue tidal wave

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Result of parliamentary elections in France

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

Sarkozy honeymoon fades as the voters reject his ‘blue tidal wave’.
Charles Bremner in Paris.

President Sarkozy has sealed his command of the French State for the next five years after voters yesterday gave his centre-right party a majority in parliament. The opposition Socialist Party made a surprisingly strong comeback after its first-round rout on May 6.

In the final bout of a two-month electoral season, Mr Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement and its allies won about 350 of the 577 seats. In the outgoing National Assembly they held 359.

Left-wing voters heeded alarm calls from the Socialist Party after the “blue tidal wave” towards the UMP in last Sunday’s first round and raised its seats from 149 to more than 200. The Socialists spent the second-round campaign week fanning fears that François Fillon, the Prime Minister, was aiming to raise value added tax by two percentage points. The Communist Party, which had seemed destined for extinction, managed to save about half of its 21 seats.

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2669889.ece

Socialists hold back 'blue tidal wave' with second-round rally.
By John Lichfield in Paris.
Published: 18 June 2007.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, failed to win the crushing majority that he expected in the second round of the French parliamentary elections last night.

Although his centre right party won a clear majority in the National Assembly - with a projected 328 seats - M. Sarkozy fell far short of the “blue tidal wave“ forecast by the opinion polls.

Voters substantially increased the number of Socialist seats in the lower house of parliament - apparently punishing the new president for his plans to increase VAT while cutting taxes for the wealthy.

The Parti Socialiste, which appeared to be facing disaster after the first round last week, was projected to win 206 seats - over 50 more than it held in the outgoing assembly.

The Socialist leader, François Hollande - whose position had been under threat - said the vote showed the “first signs of suspicion, even fear“ of the reform projects of M. Sarkozy and his Prime Minister, François Fillon. M. Hollande - who was visibly delighted - saluted a “victory for democracy and pluralism“. “France intends to walk on both feet,“ he said.

The new centrist party of François Bayrou was forecast to win three seats, including his own in the Pau in the Pyrenees. The Communists were likely to win 15 seats (down from 21) and the Greens three (as before). A new centrist party allied to M. Sarkozy seemed likely to win 22 seats.

The victory gives M. Sarkozy more than enough strength to push his social, economic and fiscal reforms through. He has promised a busy, extraordinary session of the new assembly, lasting all of next month, which will consider changes to the justice system, universities and pensions.

The new parliament will also begin work on his promised tax cuts for the relatively wealthy. These will include a ceiling on total personal taxes of 50 per cent of earnings and the virtual abolition of inheritance tax. Income tax on overtime will be abolished to dilute the 35-hour working week.

M. Sarkozy has to tread carefully, however. In the last week, the left has managed to raise doubt about the fairness of his reforms for the first time. M. Sarkozy was forced to admit that he planned to increase VAT by up to five per cent to help to reduce pay-roll “social“ taxes on business.

This may make sense in the long run but increasing VAT while cutting taxes for the wealthy has proved to be - at the least - electorally clumsy. It seems the potential pain, as well as gain, of M. Sarkozy's reform programme is beginning to sink in with the electorate.

Despite the better than expected performance by the left, a bloody civil war is now inevitable over the future leadership and direction of the Parti Socialiste. The Socialist leader, M. Hollande, has been under pressure to step down before the end of his term as first secretary next year.

Even his partner, and the mother of his four children, the defeated presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, has suggested that the party needs to make an immediate new start.

The Socialists are, most of all, in need of new partners to replace the “further left“ - from Communists to Greens - whose support has subsided. Mme Royal favours some some sort of alliance with M. Bayrou's new centre party.

Her partner, M. Hollande, also believes that the party should try to sprawl over the centre ground, but in competition with M. Bayrou, not in alliance with him.

Mme Royal wants to emerge as a kind of de facto leader of the Opposition and presidential candidate-in-waiting - even though she did not herself run for parliament. She said last night that the French people had had a “crisis of conscience“ between the two rounds of the election. The Socialist party now had to work out its future with “imagination and profound thought“.