Elections leave a murky picture
THE SOCIALIST Party leadership succeeded in demobilizing enough working-class voters in the final round of the presidential elections to avert the burden of a mandate for anti-capitalist policies. Although the rate of abstention dropped somewhat from nearly 35% in the first round, it was still a record 30%.
In parliamentary terms, the election was extremely close. If the SP leaders had been slightly more successful in convincing working people that they had no stake in the vote, the right would have re emerged with a comfortable absolute majority. The close results have created a playground for backroom parliamentary wheeling and dealing likely to increase indifference to elections.
GERRY FOLEY
EAR of the right seemed to have
F the most effect in mobilizing left voters, as in the presidential elections. But in the two rounds of the legislative elections on June 5 and 12, it did not operate so much on the national level. The right was on the defensive and appeared to have closed ranks against the
National Front, except in the second round
Results of the June 12 legislative election* % seats
(includes seats won June 5)
SP and allies 49.05 276
Communist Party 3.06 27
URC and misc.
right 46.80 271
National Front 1.08 1
Abstention 30.5
Total left 52.11 298
Total right 47.08 272
[289 seats needed for an absolute majority]
* Only 453 out of the total 575 seats were conte votes. in Marseilles and the rest of the department of Bouches du Rhône.
In the Marseilles area, the June 17 issue of Rouge (the paper of the LCR, the French section of the Fourth International)pointed out that, "you can really talk about a 'pink wave'...multiplied to the national level, the Marseilles case would have undoubtedly brought about a pink landslide." Following the presidential election, the polls had indicated a large victory for the Socialist Party in the legislative vote.
The traditional right's alliance (the Union du Rassemblement et du Centre — URC) in the Marseilles area concluded a shamefaced deal with the National Front, standing down for NF candidates where they came ahead in the first round. But of 16 national assembly deputies elected in the department, eight are Socialists and three are Communists. Moreover, the fortunes of the Socialist Party, on the decline for a long time in this area, showed a remarkable revival.
The abstention rate in Marseilles declined perceptibly more in the second round than nationally, falling by 6% as against the national drop of 4%, although it remained high in some districts. National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who represented the entire right in the city's eighth district, was clearly defeated by his SP opponent, Marius Masse, 43% to 56%. All the nationally known leaders of the racist party were concentrated in Marseilles. None of them won.
However, the votes were close in some districts. The Socialist Philippe Sanmarco defeated his NF opponent Jean Roussel by 50.43% to 49.57%. Jeanine Ecochard defeated Gabriel Domenech of the NF by 51.38% to 48.61%. The flagship of the SP's "opening," Bernard Tapie, a flamboyant capitalist, was defeated by his URC opponent by hardly more than 80 votes.
Rouge's Marseilles correspondent, Patrick Ming, offered three explanations for the left's success. First, the transfer of
FRANCE Results of June 5 (first round) % of vote SP and allies 37.55 Communist Party 11.32 URC and misc. 40.52 right National Front 9.78 Far left** 0.36 ested on June 12, the others having been decided votes between the CP and the SP was especially good. "The perspective of the election of a Le-Pen supporter outweighed the years of violent polemics between the two parties. For example, Guy Hermier [a CP candidate] gave the NF candidate a drubbing, taking 63% of the vote." Secondly, the NF-URC deal repelled a fringe of the traditional right's voters. "Roussel, the local NF leader, lost 1,000 votes from the total right vote in the first round, or 15% of the URC vote." Thirdly, there were actual shifts of right voters to the left where the NF stood in the second round. Thus, the SP candidate Ecochard gained 5,000 votes in the second round, when the total additional vote was only 3,000.
National decline in NF vote
Since the "opening" was supposed to win over voters from the bourgeois parties, Marseilles is the one place that it can be said to have worked on the electoral level. The key factor was opposition to the National Front. This was obviously something at this stage that bourgeois politicians can accept. In fact, Tapie took a more outspokenly "anti-fascist" line than the SP itself. On the night of the election, he identified the NF with the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini and repeated his denunciation of the NF voters themselves as racists, to the evident embarrassment of SP premier Michel Rocard, who appeared on the same TV program.
The NF vote declined nationally in the first round to the level of its vote in the last legislative elections, 9.8% (9.9% in 1986), as opposed to the 14.4% that it got in the first round of the presidential elections. But it came ahead of the traditional right in eight of the 16 districts in the Marseilles area. Although the NF was prevented from getting seats in the second round, the danger of it winning the upcoming municipal elections has by no means been eliminated. 5 If the NF could win control of the counJune 27, 1988 • #144 International Viewpoint by a clear winner emerging in the first round on June 5 (except for two seats in French Polynesia, where the vote will take place on June 26). With few exceptions, the CP and NF stood only in those districts where they came ahead respectively of the left and right on June 5.
** The only far left candidates were about 50 backed by the Committees around the Juquin campaign (see IV 141). The national total therefore is small, but many candidates got significant by a clear winner emerging in the first round on June 5 (except for two seats in French Polynesia, where the vote will take place on June 26). With few exceptions, the CP and NF stood only in those districts where they came ahead respectively of the left and right on June 5.
** The only far left candidates were about 50 backed by the Committees around the Juquin campaign (see IV 141). The national total therefore is small, but many candidates got significant
FRANCE try's second largest city, that would make it far more of a threat than winning a large protest vote in presidential election or getting a few dozen deputies in the national assembly.
In this respect, although the immediate results of traditional right's pact with the NF were thin gruel for both, the neofascists gained a new legitimacy in the Marseilles area in particular that could prove very dangerous. Moreover, the NF's setback could have paradoxical effects. It could deprive the SP to some extent of a bogieman for rallying the left and liberal vote. It could increase the NF's appeal to popular layers who feel cheated by the electoral game.
To a large extent, in fact the decline in the NF's national vote can be attributed to undemocratic changes in the election system. With nearly 9% of the national vote, the NF got only one deputy. Under the first-past-the-post system reintroduced by the traditional right majority elected in 1986, the smaller parties have little chance of getting representation commensurate with their actual percentage of the vote. So, French TV viewers have been treated to the rare sight of a neo-fascist strongman not denouncing democracy but protesting against the lack of it.
Socialist deals with centre-right
Moreover, the layers of the population who feel unrepresented by the present system will almost certainly grow. None of the basic problems raised by the capitalist crisis were settled by the elections. And the center of the political stage is now being occupied by parliamentary maneuvers carried out in sovereign disregard of the voters. Even the traditional right is raising a hue and cry over the dealing by elements of the UDF with the SP government, which they can rightly claim was not at all sanctioned by the voters. In fact, some pollsters point to a sharp drop already in the popularity of SP government, although it has not yet had time to do anything.
Decline in CP's vote reversed
During the campaign itself, the bourgeois center righteously spurned the SP's advances. And the elections themselves showed that the centrists who ran on the SP's presidential majority slate were rejected by their past supporters, although in a number of cases they got a good vote from the left.
The Socialist Party itself got a sharp warning from left voters. The Communist Party centered its campaign against the "opening," against alliances with bourgeois politicians. That clearly paid off. First the first time in a decade, the decline in the CP vote was reversed. In the first round, it rose to 11.3%, in comparison with the 6.8% that the party got in the presidential election and the 9.8% that it got in the 1986 legislative elections. On the other hand, the CP vote must now be less certain than in the past, since a lot of these voters are not committed to the party and cannot be counted on to go along with opportunist or sectarian turns.
In the first round of the presidential elections, for example, the far left candidates got a total of around 4.5% of the vote. That is equivalent to more than 40% of the CP's vote in the second round, and it
For an SP/CP government! THE FACTORY bulletins of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire, French section of the Fourth International, published a common editorial on the election results. The following are excerpts:
Since 1983 and 1984 all the elections have given the same signals - massive abstentions on the left, disillusionment and disgust, a rise of the National Front in the context of a worsening crisis and declining credibility of the parties. Chirac profited from this to retake the government in 1986 and deal still harder blows to wage earners, young people and the Kanaks. Two years later, he has bitten the dust! But in the legislative elections, the right-wing minority has nonetheless managed to save its face because the SP keeps bowing to it.
This has to end! The voters have clearly chosen a new Socialist and Communist majority. They have rebuffed the president's centrist cronies. So much the better. The left cannot be remobilized with such people. And that is what the situation demands. There is a political solution an SP and CP government that meets the main demands of the people.
To the Socialists, we say, stop demobilizing our camp by overtures to the right. To the Communists, we say stop your zigzags and divisive maneuvers. On the basis of the unity of the workers and their organizations, we must demand the following urgent measures: a 6,000 franc minimum wage for all, including the unemployed; a 35-hour workweek; an end to militarism and French nuclear weapons; real equality between men and women; an end to the expulsions of immigrant workers and granting their right to vote; independence for New Caledonia.
This are the elements of a left policy that can mobilize, of a government that 6 can fight the crisis. Mitterrand and Rocard are doing the opposite! Let us fight together to win our demands. * International Viewpoint #144 • June 27, 1988 seems certain that most of the far-left vote went to the CP. But, of course, that by itself does not explain the party's success. The apparatus of the CP has remained largely intact, despite the decline in the party's popularity, and it weighed heavily in the election of deputies in areas where the CP is rooted in local government. This also explains why the Communists suffered less from a system skewed against minorities than the NF.
The importance of the CP's local bases was indicated by the fact that 12, or around half of the CP's deputies are now also mayors. Of the previous CP parliamentary group of 32, only five were mayors. In the areas where the CP vote went up by more than 20% in comparison with the presidential elections, a number of CP deputies were elected, of whom seven were mayors. This makes the upcoming municipal elections even more crucial for the CP. And in a number of these areas, the far-left forces assembled around the Juquin campaign in the first round of the presidential elections got substantial votes.
To a considerable extent, the relative success of the Communist Party has deprived the SP of an alibi for concessions to the right. The CP deputies give the working class parties a majority in the assembly. The fact that the CP holds the margin of victory can put considerable pressure on the Socialist Party apparatus at lower levels, who can be expected to have a hard time explaining it to their base if the SP parliamentary leadership fails to bloc with the CP to pass pro-labor legislation.
Growing political and social instability
If the SP follows too riaht wind a line it If the SP follows too right wing a line, it risks seeing its rivals regain a lot of the ground it has won from them since 1981. On the other hand, there will certainly be strong pressures on the CP to take a united-front approach, because of the support for working-class unity shown in the elections.
Furthermore, the elections have shown that far-left sentiment is already strong enough, if properly focused, to exercise a real pressure on the big workers parties. This potential has been recognized even by the Socialist Party, which ran a number of candidates with far left backgrounds (some of whom were elected) and offered places on its slate to the Juquin committees (which were rejected).
So overall the elections point to a new period of growing political and social instability, with both greater dangers and greater opportunities for the workers' movement. The hold of the reformist leaderships on the working class seems to have weakened. But political and trade-union alternatives have to be built to keep the resistance of workers and oppressed groups from being scattered and to counter disillusion. *
NEW CALEDONIA