BY PATRICK O’NEILL  
In the first round of voting for the French presidency, the ultrarightist National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen came in second to incumbent president Jacques Chirac, the candidate of the conservative Gaullist Rally for the French Republic (RPR). Le Pen edged out Lionel Jospin, the Socialist Party candidate and current prime minister. Chirac and Le Pen will now face each other in a May 5 runoff.

Many working people who have faced years of assault by the government saw little difference between the two major candidates and simply stayed away from the polls. Some 28 percent of voters stayed away, the highest level of abstention in French history. Chirac came out ahead with just under 20 percent of the vote, the lowest tally of a front-runner since the foundation of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Le Pen slipped by Jospin by some 230,000 votes.

Repudiating Le Pen and his stridently nationalist and anti-immigrant policies, tens of thousands of people, including high school and college students and young workers, greeted the results by organizing daily demonstrations in many cities. Immigrants have been prominent among the protesters. Police have attacked demonstrations in Paris with tear gas.

Opinion polls had predicted that Jospin and Chirac would be neck and neck in the voting. "I assume full responsibility for this defeat," said Jospin. "I will be retiring from politics."

The vote for the SP leader fell from 23 percent in 1995, when he was defeated by Chirac in the runoff, to a shade over 16 percent. His electoral support among unionists, indebted farmers, and other working people has declined as he and his party have helped to lead the assault by the capitalist class in France on health and education services, democratic rights, and other social conquests of working people.

Workers have taken to the streets in their tens of thousands in response to the government and employer offensive. In February 2001 some 300,000 workers mobilized to oppose the demands of the employers’ federation to push back the retirement age. Two months later more than 10,000 farmers marched in 78 towns throughout France to "save cattle raising and the rural world," and demanded the government release aid it had promised to help cattle raisers. In May thousands of workers struck rail and bus lines to oppose layoffs, plant closures, and threats of privatization of public industries.

These protests took place one week after municipal elections across the country. In a harbinger of the national vote this year, large numbers of workers either abstained from voting or cast their ballots for small centrist groups that have the image of being more combative than the government’s Plural Left coalition, which is led by the Socialist Party, with the French Communist Party as a junior partner. In the municipal elections the vote for the French CP plummeted as workers became increasingly dissatisfied with the policies of the government. The official unemployment rate, which Jospin pledged to cut substantially, is currently at 8.8 percent, and stands at 25 percent for immigrant workers.

In contrast to the hostility he has aroused among many unionists, working farmers, and other working people, Jospin has won plaudits from capitalist politicians and commentators. "Jospin has been, on the whole, a rather good capitalist prime minister," wrote Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. in an April 23 opinion piece.

Candidates identifying themselves as Trotskyist scored a total of 14 percent of the votes. The New York Times editors described this result as "the other shocking aspect of Sunday’s protest vote."

CP leader Robert Hue joined SP figures in urging working people to vote for the right-wing Chirac against Le Pen in the May 5 runoff. SP leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn said it is the "honor of our country that is at stake" in the vote to defeat Le Pen.  
 
Anti-immigrant demagogy
Le Pen scored well in the north and east of the country, where unemployment is high. He also maintained his traditional base in the wealthy resort areas in southern France. According to commentators, the rightist politician picked up support among a number of workers who have traditionally voted for the pro-Moscow Stalinist Communist Party. CP candidate Hue received less than 3.4 percent of the tally.

Throughout the campaign, Le Pen pounded away at his anti-immigrant, nationalist themes, and was bolstered by Chirac placing "law and order" at the center of his political message. In the first round, reported the New York Times, "the immigrant crime issue was addressed euphemistically as the ‘security problem,’ but it nonetheless dominated the debate."

Le Pen calls for the creation of 200,000 new prison beds and for expanded powers to the police. To demands for the deportation of illegal immigrants and a separate medical benefits system for foreigners, he adds a barely-veiled call for violence. "Immigration is the most fundamental problem for France," he said in January of last year, claiming that there is a "formidable feeling of hatred within the French population."

At the same time, the fascist Le Pen poses as a champion of the little man against a corrupt political elite and of the "French nation."

"Don’t be afraid to dream, you little people, the foot soldiers, the excluded, you the miners, the steelworkers, the workers of all those industries ruined by the Euro-globalization of Maastricht," said Le Pen April 21, referring to the treaty setting up a common currency and central bank in the European Union (EU). Le Pen called on the "French of all races, religions, and social conditions to rally round this historic chance for a national recovery."

Le Pen has vowed to take France out of the EU and to reconsider Paris’s commitment to the imperialist occupation of Afghanistan. The latter, he says, is "the problem of the Americans.... Personally, I want France to sweep in front of its own door, solve its own problems at home, rather than give advice abroad."

The rightist politician also takes aim at women, calling for the outlawing of abortion, the development of programs to increase the birth rate, and financial incentives for women to stay at home.

The setback for the Socialist Party fits in with electoral results recorded in Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Portugal, where governments of or including social democratic parties have recently been voted out of office after leading the ruling-class attacks on workers and farmers.

Rightist figures have also built support in a number of countries, from Austria to Italy to the Netherlands, by scapegoating immigrant workers for unemployment and other aspects of the capitalist crisis.
 
 
Related article:
Elections in France
 
 
 
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