POLITICS-EUROPE: Left Win is Short of a Left Turn

By Julio Godoy Reprint | | Print |

Julio Godoy

PARIS, Mar 29 2004 (IPS) - The landslide victory of a leftist coalition in the French regional elections Sunday duplicates the success of the Socialist Labour Party in Spain two weeks ago, but is unlikely set a political trend in Europe.

Led by the Socialist Party (PS), the French left won the elections Sunday in 21 of 22 regions, obtaining 50 percent of the national vote. The right-wing ruling party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and its junior the French Democratic Union got only 37 percent of the vote. At the last regional elections in1998 the right-wing coalition had won 14 regions.

Voters were called on to elect only local governments, but most analysts see the leftist victory as a blow to the policies of the national government of President Jacques Chirac.

“The electoral result is a clear repudiation of Jacques Chirac,” wrote Serge July, director of the daily Libération.

Robert Schneider went further in a comment in the weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur. In an article titled “Chirac the damned” he pointed out that “the policies the present right-wing government put in place over two years are Chirac’s personal creation. He is primarily responsible for the defeat.”

The voters did indeed punish Chirac’s government: all 19 ministers running for regional offices lost the elections. Leftist governments were elected in regions that have been strongholds of the right.

In the Pays de la Loire region in the centre of the country, social affairs minister Francois Fillon responsible for privatisation of the pension system and for cuts in state support for the long-term unemployed, lost the election to a socialist candidate. A leftist candidate had never won here in the last 100 years.

In Poitou Charentes in the south-west, Socialist candidate Segolene Royal won comfortably with more than 50 percent of the vote. Until two years back the region was governed by present prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Raffarin had campaigned actively here for his party candidate.

“This is a popular appeal to end a system of injustice that further impoverishes the poor,” Royal said after the election. “The people are against the dismantling of the welfare state, and want efficient public services.”

Some analysts suggest the left win was helped by the surprise victory of the Socialist Labour Party in Spain (PSOE) in the Spanish parliamentary elections Mar. 14. Segolene Royal was spoken of during the campaign as “Zapatera”, in reference to the Spanish prime minister-elect José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. But the overwhelming reasons were clearly domestic.

The ruling UMP party president Alain Juppé admitted that the defeat was due to popular discontentment provoked by government policies. But he said the reforms must continue.

“We certainly have to better inform people of our course of action, we must explain better the reforms we are pursuing,” Juppé said.

Juppé, a firm believer in radical market economy, was echoing statements from German Social Democratic and Green leaders, still considered leftist parties despite their record of dismantling Germany’s welfare state.

Franz Muentefering who replaced German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) a month ago said: “There is no way back on our reform path. What he have to do is to better explain the objectives of our policy.”

That the right-wing leader Juppé and the Social Democrat Muentefering used the same language to reject popular calls to end rightist social and economic policy is no coincidence.

Both the right-wing French government and the SPD-Green ruling coalition in Germany are putting in place similar programmes – partial privatisation of the pensions system and of health insurance, heavy cuts in the state aid for the long-term jobless, substantial reduction of taxes for business and the high income classes, and easing of dismissal procedures.

The economic results of these policies so far are similar in both countries: France and Germany suffered a recession last year, leading to higher unemployment. Both countries have the highest deficits and state debt levels in Europe.

But from all this to see a renewal of Social Democratic leadership in Europe would be too long a shot. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi might be the next right-wing head of government to be voted out of office, but the results so far in France and Spain, or the signs in Italy and Germany do not add up to a leftist ideological renaissance.

Before the leftist triumph in Spain and in the local elections in France, the Greek Socialist party PASOK lost the parliamentary elections after ten years of rule despite a social and economic record considered remarkable.

And while in France the Socialist-led leftist coalition can nourish hopes of a national victory in the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2007, there is no leftist alternative to the SPD-Green coalition in Germany. Present opinion polls make the right-wing Christian Democratic Union a sure winner in parliamentary elections scheduled for 2006.

In other countries with a strong socialist or social democratic tradition such as Holland, Austria, and Denmark, leftist parties have been swept out of office by right-wing, and even far right coalitions. Similar patterns have been seen in Italy and Portugal.

In Britain New Labour led by Prime Minister Tony Blair has only taken on the mantle of former conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher under a new label, the ‘Third Way’.