Nicolas Sarkozy triumphed on 17 June 2007 for the second time in less than two months. The man elected French president on 6 May, who wanted to give back to the right its conservative pride, obtained a clear working majority in the second round of legislative elections with 60% of the seats in the national assembly. It is the fulfilment of any successful politician's dream: for the first time since 1978 a sitting majority has been returned to power.
Anyone else would have felt gratified by this popular seal of approval which should allow this man always in a hurry to implement his bold election promises to change France on a conservative path. So why this gloom in the winning camp while the defeated left - or what's left of it besides the Parti Socialiste (PS) - is grinning as if it had won?
The main reason is power-greed, a vision of politics where the leader wants to control everything. "Sarko" the winner wanted to control parliament as he controls the right through his hegemonic Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement / UMP) party. He demanded, he predicted - as relayed by his Prime Minister François Fillon - a blue "tidal wave", a tsunami, a socialist humiliation, and all power for himself. His ambitions were transmitted too by a tame (to say the least) media - and by opinion polls announcing that the French would vote en masse for the president's men. Like generals on the eve of routing the enemy, his ministers were announcing that the political landscape would be cleared of any meaningful opposition after the second round; while their leader Sarkozy was manoeuvring to destabilise the demoralised socialists by catching a few more opponents - attracted by the prospect of a ministerial portfolio - in his net. There had to be no borders to the power of a president who had already stolen from his own prime minister his constitutional right to form the government and even his weekend mansion in Versailles.
Patrice de Beer is former London and Washington correspondent for Le Monde.
Among Patrice de Beer's recent articles in openDemocracy:
"French politics: where extremes meet"
(4 December 2006)
"Why is the left so gauche?"
(26 February 2007)
"France's telepolitics: showbiz, populism, reality"
(2 April 2007)
"France's intellectual election"
(16 April 2007)
"France's choice: the Bayrou factor"
(24 April 2007)
"Sarkozy's rightwing revolution"
(8 May 2007)
"Le Monde's democratic coup"
(30 May 2007)The flexible French
Yet media and pollsters were proved wrong, in a way which could raise questions about their accuracy or even independence: instead of a rump 100-130 leftist MPs predicted, they number 230 (more than after the victory of Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy's arch-rival, in 2002). It is clear that many conservative voters, tranquillised by the pre-announced tsunami, didn't bother to vote while leftist voters rallied to save their candidates and were supported by centrists fighting for the survival of "pluralism". The result was a paradoxical second round where the left received as many votes as the right.
It is no surprise then that the socialists gloated about a success which was in fact only a less resounding defeat than predicted. Despite a lacklustre campaign, the lack of a coherent and appealing programme, and a divided leadership - with defeated presidential candidate Ségolène Royal having separated from her partner and the PS's leader François Hollande - they achieved a result at one stage they could only dream of... and hope now confirm their "success" in the 2008 local elections.
If the PS at least begins its long overdue and belated political renovation, resolves the conflicting ambitions of its "elephant" senior statesmen, discards its outdated class-struggle jargon and aligns itself again with French society and the world situation, works on new ideas rather than rehashing old slogans - it may have a chance to return from the wilderness. "Now is the time for young lions, the elephants have become a thing of the past" gloated one of Ségo's MPs. That may be too early a judgment, as a party can't expect to win elections only thanks to the government's eagerly expected blunders; and it is not impossible that the socialists could endure a fourth consecutive defeat in 2012 by a Sarkozy able to "open" his team to popular defectors.
After all, a defining feature of the current political situation is that French voters have become much more versatile. Traditional parties have become classless, political "zapping" is now a fact of life and automatic support from the same group of voters is a thing of the past. In a "pick and mix" society, people no longer support governments through thick and thin, or opposition that only oppose and offer no new proposals or readiness to work with the majority on questions of the national interest. In this new environment, politicians have to convince - and not just once, or even once every five years, but in an unending and unavoidable process of dialogue with the voters.
The frontline president
Sarkozy intends to pursue his promised reforms irrespective of the result. But will he be able to translate his political promises into hard reality; to coerce social partners, such as the trade unions; to give a new dynamism to a static French economy by creating jobs and reducing the debt while satisfying conservative voters with massive fiscal perks; to build alliances for change in the European Union, now facing even greater challenges than agreeing a modified treaty at its Brussels summit on 21-22 June; above all, to convince the most versatile of all people, the French?
The former prime minister of the UMP, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has said that the admission by the treasurer - who has just been shifted sideways to the new environment super-ministry - that the government was considering a 5% rise of VAT to soothe the cost of social-security payments on employers while indirectly taxing imports had resulted in the right losing sixty MPs. This was the first sign that voters whose hip-pocket nerve is stung might have second thoughts. So, will Sarko move on boldly and fast as he promises, or stall at the first obstacle?
During Sarkozy's post-election honeymoon, he took the opportunity to display his Houdini-like way of governing, when he effectively acted as prime minister, foreign minister (leaving his new appointee as head of French diplomacy, ex-socialist Bernard Kouchner, looking like a super-minister of humanitarian affairs) and government spokesman as well as president. This carries dangers for him. In the republican monarchy that is the French fifth republic, the prime minister has been the president's buffer, the man ready to resign to protect his boss's popularity. Nicolas Sarkozy's style, by contrast, is to put himself in the frontline of any crisis. The flip-side of his media-hyped one-man show could be a boomerang.
The marginal others
After the honeymoon comes the reality. But as the national assembly reconvenes on 26 June 2007, and before the new political climate in France acquires its new shape, three lessons can be drawn from this four-round cycle of elections. First, Nicolas Sarkozy won so decisively partly because he succeeded in crushing the far-right National Front, which was reduced to a third of its former strength (4.68% of the votes). If he can be credited with ridding France of the Jean-Marie Le Pen sore, the cost has been the radicalisation of the traditional right, evident in threatening language towards reluctant partners and verbal abuses of opponents. The prime minister has repeatedly insulted the opposition, while a former minister asked the opposition to help UMP "eliminate" all communists. The example of Italy under Silvio Berlusconi and Spain under Josè Maria Aznar are relevant precedents here in indicating how behaviour inherited from the extreme right can coarsen democratic life.
Second, the arrival of a new generation of more energetic leaders in their early 50s like Sarko and Ségo in a French political world long dominated by aged leaders cannot conceal the fact that the political world is not easy to change. Many new ministers were members of Jacques Chirac's previous governments; Sarkozy has not been able, or didn't have enough time, to rejuvenate his MPs (nor has Royal with the PS). Only 150 MPs out of 577 elected on 17 June are new; many have a long political career behind them; the average age of the new assembly is 55 (58 in 2002). Meanwhile, a new, ambitious, often qualified but also impatient generation of quadras (40-plus) is banging at the door.
The third lesson is that this new assembly is still shamefully lacking in diversity. A law demanding an equal number of male and female candidates (including a financial penalty) has prodded neither the UMP (26%) nor the PS (45%) to reach this threshold - and even these candidates are often in unwinnable seats. The result is the election of only 107 women (sixty-one for the left, forty-six for the conservative majority, 18.5% of the total), ranking France fifteenth within the European Union and fifty-sixth in the world.
The score is even worse for the so-called "visible minorities". Only one candidate has been elected, a socialist woman from the French West Indies (leaving aside France's overseas territories); all other "black and beur" (Arab) candidates, left or right, were defeated. The results tend to show too that non-white candidates received fewer votes than the average of their parties, suggesting that the French - whatever they say, and notwithstanding their Hungarian-origin president - are resistant to being represented by someone of non-white immigrant background.
Moreover, it seems that many immigrant neighbourhoods did not bother to vote at all, even if they had the chance to secure victory for a favoured candidate. Many of the 40% of the French who didn't vote in the assembly elections - a record high number of abstentions - that voting for the president is all that matters; many of the rest either didn't understand or didn't care about taking part in a democratic process which remains their only chance to be heard. Sarkozy has appointed three - female - members of "visible minorities" to his government; but even with that welcome move he has a lot of work to do, and French society a long way to go.
