France’s Socialist Party on Monday said its candidates would fall on their swords in three regions to try and prevent the far-Right Front National from clinching historic electoral victories next Sunday.
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As France suffers the fallout from the November 13 attacks on Paris, the far-right National Front party emerged as frontrunners in the regional election primaries.
Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Front chalked up scores that reached 40 percent of the vote in several regions, including in the northeast where Le Pen is running and in the southeast where her niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen, leads the list of candidates.
However, Le Pen and Marechal-Le Pen are expected to win in their respective regions, giving the National Front its first regional governments – a milestone in the history of the party, which so far has governed only a handful of small municipalities.
The Socialist party, whose most recognizable member is current President François Hollande, said it would withdraw candidates from two regions to help former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Republican party, France’s conservatives, defeat the NF.
If traditional parties refuse to join forces against them, analysts predict the FN could take all three regions in the second round on December 13. The head of the French employers’ group, Medef, warned before the regional elections that her proposals were the exact opposite of what the country needed.
The socialists of president Francois Hollande have already begun withdrawing candidates, but Mr Sarkozy, leader of the centre-right Republicans, ruled out any tactical alliance.
But whatever the outcome in the second round ballot this Sunday, media outlets predict Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, is here to stay. The elder Le Pen was kicked out of the National Front earlier this year, amid a public spat with his 47-year-old daughter over a number of inflammatory statements on the Holocaust and other topics.
Opponents say the National Front criticizes without offering solutions.
Le Pen’s National Front took advantage of fears across the country by campaigning on an anti-immigration, anti-EU and often Islamophobic platform to garner support in the aftermath of deadly attacks in the nation’s capital Paris.
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“We’re not home and dry yet, especially since the election is being run in an unfair way”, she said on French radio RTL. Out of five presidential attempts, he came the closest to the top job in 2002, making it to the second round of the elections, before losing out to Jacques Chirac. Last spring, it got 25 percent at the first round of local elections but failed to win any departments.
