Grass-roots politics and Brazilian flair saw the French Socialiststriumph last week as the formidable Ségolène Royal trounced her rival,writes Tony Kinsella
France has just elected its regional authorities and half its départements (counties), giving the country's left a stunning victory. The left scored just over 50 per cent in the regions, and nearly 52 per cent in the départements. All this on a higher than usual turnout of 65 per cent.
Thirteen of France's 21 mainland regions were governed by the right before the elections; today 20 of them are governed by the left. Ten départements, some of which had been governed by the right since their creation in 1789, elected left majorities.
Everybody expected Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's bumbling and hapless government to suffer in these midterm elections, but nobody anticipated the scale of a slaughter which has seriously damaged President Jacques Chirac.
Voters did not flock to the easy protest opportunities. The extreme right National Front saw its vote slip a little, to 12 per cent. The Trotskyist LO-LCR vote halved to 5 per cent. Supporters of Chirac's conservative UMP had the safe protest option of voting for their centrist UDF ally, and while it progressed to 12 per cent, that marginal improvement drowned in the red tidal wave.
An absolute majority of voters chose the Socialist Party (PS), and its Green, Communist and Left Radical allies. The PS is only beginning to recover from Lionel Jospin's defeat in 2002, and his sudden withdrawal from political life. The party's general secretary, François Hollande, has done a solid repair job, but the party lacks a programme for government and, most importantly in the French system, a clear presidential candidate.
France, like many countries, is struggling to adapt its welfare systems to cope with demographic and technological changes. French voters are no exception to the universal demand that this burden be equally shared - with special attention being given to the more vulnerable.
Raffarin cut income tax (only paid by the top half of French taxpayers) while significantly reducing pay-related unemployment benefits. Over 200,000 unemployed were peremptorily informed that their benefits would end several months early.
The special unemployment cover for artists and technicians in the cultural sector (intermittents du spectacle) was radically restricted. As the howl of protest grew, the government did nothing while many of France's prestigious and lucrative festivals were cancelled.
Scientific researchers took to the streets over a shortage of funds and employment contracts. Teachers fought reductions in posts. Non-academic educational staff objected to being transferred from national to regional employment.
The government's response that times were hard, already dented by its tax-cutting policy, was completely undermined when additional funds were instantly found to compensate tobacconists for revenue losses due to a tax hike on tobacco. Raffarin compounded this when another few million euro appeared for restaurateurs forced to wait for EU agreement on lowering VAT rates.
Some 15,000 elderly people died in last summer's heatwave - while the government was seen to be doing nothing.
Yet, although these negative factors are important, what French electors voted for may be of greater relevance beyond their borders.
France's regions are new, established in the early 1980s under President Mitterand. Their father was Mitterand's first prime minister, Pierre Mauroy, long a champion of decentralisation, who gambled that the regions would grow to balance France's hyper-centralised Jacobin state. Mauroy's gamble is paying off. European regionalism may be emerging as the real counterbalance to European federalism.
Popular regional leaders lacking either national careers, or national ambitions, have emerged. The Socialist presidents of Aquitaine (around Bordeaux), Alain Rousset, and Jean-Paul Huchon of Ile-de-France (around Paris) are good examples. Unknown outside their regions, they triumphed. If Rousset's 55 per cent score in a left region was impressive, Huchon's 49.2 per cent victory in a traditionally conservative one - against the heaviest guns the government could throw against him - was spectacular.
The real spectacle came from the largely rural and conservative Poitou-Charentes region, stretching inland from La Rochelle - Jean-Pierre Raffarin's fief.
His successor, Elisabeth Morin, was trounced by her Socialist challenger, Ségolène Royal, with over 55 per cent of the vote. A former junior minister, Ms Royal mixes much of the best of traditional French political training with a zest of Brazil.
This 50-year-old mother-of-four, partner of the PS general secretary François Hollande, comes from a devoutly Catholic and politically conservative French military family. Born in Senegal, she grew up in Lorraine. A brilliant scholarship student, she graduated from France's prestigious École Nationale d'Administration with the dashing Minister of the Interior, Dominique de Villepin. She was a political staffer under Mitterand before becoming a deputy from Poitou-Charentes in 1988.
Inspired by Lula's Brazilian Workers' Party's "participatory democracy", she crisscrossed the region over the last two years meeting over 50,000 local political, social, cultural, associative and economic actors, individually, in small groups, and through 50 thematic seminars. Much of her manifesto was built from this input, and most of her campaigning passed through this network. Apart from her partner, she eschewed the traditional visits by PS heavyweights.
Following the Spanish socialist victory, "Madame Ségolène" (as she is know locally) increasingly came to be called "La Zapatera". The national media now describe her as "présidentiable". Might France skip a generation in the 2007 elections? Is it ready to contemplate a woman president? When François Hollande was asked which of the couple might contemplate a bid for the Élysée, he simply smiled and said "We'll let our kids decide". Something tells me they already have.Tony Kinsella is a France-based commentator