France: Regional elections
01 March 1998
The French regional elections of 1998 will be remembered as a watershed in French political life, marking the point at which the extreme-right Front National (FN) made its most significant in-roads to date into mainstream politics, with the explicit assistance of politicians of the traditional right. Moreover, the problems of the electoral system introduced by Francois Mitterand for regional elections have been thrown into sharp relief by the events of recent weeks.
The particular form of proportional representation used at regional level has been criticised by the left and by members of the traditional right for its tendency to allow small, extremist parties to become power brokers and to encourage political deals at the expense of political integrity. These two problems were manifest in the aftermath of the initial voting on March 15. The Minister for parliamentary relations, Daniel Vaillant, has since promised that a bill will be drafted before the summer to change the way regional elections are conducted.
The initial poll gave the left coalition, (Socialists, Communists and Greens), a total of 611 seats on the regional councils, next to the traditional right's (RPR and UDF) 547. The FN won 275 seats, 15.3% of the 3.3 million votes, (in 1992 it took 13.3% of the vote). These results gave the left a relative majority in twelve of the twenty-two regions. However, this did not translate into success for the left when the presidents of the regional councils were elected on March 20.
The FN, which on the basis of the initial vote held the balance of power in several regions, found itself in a position to exploit its success by offering its support to traditional right candidates against those of the left coalition. On March 16, Le Pen made his party's position explicit, offering to back Gaullist and UDF candidates in return for their acceptance of 6 demands, including a pledge not to raise taxes and a pledge to "defend French cultural identity". However, the leaders of the two largest parties had already made their positions clear. Seguin, for the RPR and Leotard, for the UDF, had made a "no deals" pledge as soon as it became clear that the FN would be in a power-broking position, intimating that defiance of this order would result in expulsion.
This stance opened the way for the implosion of the traditional right which has followed these elections. In five regions traditional right candidates nevertheless accepted the support of the FN and were elected. The five were: Charles Millon (Rhone-Alpes), Jacques Blanc (Languedoc-Roussillon), Bernard Harang (Centre), Charles Bauer (Picardie) and Jean-Pierre Soisson (Bourgogne). On March 25 Soisson resigned, followed later by Harang. The other three presidents remain in place and have been expelled from the UDF.
In other regions, traditional right candidates preferred to concede the presidencies to the left candidates rather than risk being elected with the support of the FN. Eduard Balladur, the former RPR prime minister, conceded the presidency of the Paris-based Ile-de-France region to the left coalition for this reason.
In previous elections Le Pen had also preferred to concede power to the left than to assist the traditional right, because of his personal dislike of Chirac. Yet in spite of the new-found spirit of cooperation, his own bid for the presidency of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region was a failure. Traditional right councillors refused to support his candidacy in spite of his claims that their support was due in return for the FN support of candidates in the five regions mentioned above. A Socialist candidate won the presidency of the region.
The results of the elections and the collaboration between the traditional and the far right have provoked a wave of protest demonstrations across France. On March 28, as many as 200,000 people, (50,000 in Paris alone), marched in protest against the FN and those who collaborated with them. On M