French elections:

Raffarin’s ‘Reforms’ Decisively Rejected

Prospect of new wave of workers’ struggles

THE RIGHT-WING Chirac-Raffarin government in France is in political meltdown
following disastrous regional election results. Its share of the vote slump to
36%.

Dave Carr

The main beneficiary was the opposition Socialist Party (PS) which won 21
out of 22 metropolitan regions. Along with the Greens and Communist Party the
PS secured 50% of the vote (an increase of 10% on its share in the first round
of elections).

Prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin suffered the further humiliation of
seeing his UMP party trounced in his home region of Poitou-Charante.

The far-right National Front (FN) got 13% of the vote – a fall of 3% in the
second round. But because of an overall higher turnout, the number voting for
the FN remained the same.

The election result wasn’t, however, a ringing endorsement for the
pro-capitalist Socialist Party. It reflected the electorate’s anger over the
government’s neo-liberal ‘reforms’ ie cutting health and welfare,
privatisation, deregulating the labour market, and attacking education and
pensions.

It was these policies that provoked, last year, a massive strike movement of
trade unionists involving teachers, healthworkers, railway workers, gas and
electricity workers, civil servants, as well as some workers in the private
sector.

But despite the government’s crushing defeat, UMP leader Alain JuppŽ,
immediately after the results became known, announced that the reforms would
continue. This sets the scene for a series of renewed clashes between the
government and the trade unions.

Social-democracy revival?

There is some media talk about a revival of Europe’s social-democrat
parties. Commentators point to PSOE’s recent victory in Spain and now the PS in
France.

This argument is flawed. It does not explain the defeat of the ruling PASOK
party by the conservative New Democracy in the recent Greek general election.
Nor does it explain why the ruling SPD party of Chancellor Schroeder suffered a
calamitous reversal in Germany’s recent regional elections.

Moreover, it fails to explain why PSOE was previously defeated by the
right-wing Popular Party of JosŽ Marie Aznar in 1996 after 14 years in
government and, why the French Socialist Party under prime minister Lionel
Jospin was defeated by the UMP in the June 2002 general election.

Jospin also failed to qualify for the second round of the presidential
election which was contested between Jaques Chirac and the Jean-Marie Le Pen of
the FN.

The PS and PSOE, as the main opposition parties, simply benefited from the
ruling parties’ problems. In Spain, Aznar suffered a backlash over his
collaboration with Bush and Blair in the Iraq war. In France, Raffarin was
beaten because his government pursued anti-working class policies at a time of
economic recession and high unemployment.

Even the pro-PS newspaper Liberation said the PS victory was more the result
of a protest vote against the government.

Europe’s social democratic parties, including Blair’s New Labour, have long
ago abandoned any pretence of fighting for socialism and have even ditched
pursuing social reforms aimed at benefiting the working class. Instead, their
political agendas have been set by the demands of big business, whose drive for
greater profits has meant a slashing of the welfare state combined with
privatisation of the public sector and labour deregulation.

This rightward shift in the traditional workers’ parties over the last
decade or two has created a political vacuum on the left.

In France, this had benefited the so-called Trotskyist parties who in the
2002 French presidential election received nearly three million votes. However,
they have since proved unable to capitalise on this potential through
initiating a viable, alternative new workers’ party.

They did not reproduce their previous successes in the recent election,
failing to progress beyond the first round.