In a landslide victory for the centre-right at last week's parliamentary elections, French voters approved Chirac's agenda of tax cuts and tough line on crime and immigration, writes David Tresilian from Paris In a result that gives French President Jacques Chirac a personal authority not seen in France since that enjoyed by General de Gaulle in the 1960s, French voters on Sunday delivered an overwhelming victory to the centre-right UMP (Union pour une Majorité Présidentielle -- Union for a Presidential Majority) in the second round of the country's parliamentary elections. The centre -right won 399 seats in the Assemblée Nationale, the French parliament, routing the Socialists, who held on to only 178 seats in the 577-seat assembly, in an election marked by an unprecedented abstention rate of nearly 40 per cent. The new government will now go on to rule France for the next five years. Immediately following the announcement of the preliminary results shortly after voting closed at 8pm on Sunday night, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Rafarin, who is expected to be confirmed in office following Sunday's landslide victory, said that the result represented "a victory for union and trust". In a televised address he told party supporters that "we have heard the message of the French people, and it is our duty not to disappoint them." In the election result, he said, "Jacque Chirac's ideas have won their majority," adding that "we will act with firmness and transparency" to carry out the UMP manifesto of tax cuts and war on the country's soaring crime rates. Members of the Socialist opposition meanwhile tried to make what sense they could out of their defeat after five years in power, during which a Socialist government led by former Socialist Party leader and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin had "cohabited", or shared power, with a centre-right president. The result was the last in the series of defeats for the French left, the most dramatic of which came in the first round of the presidential elections on 21 April when former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin was knocked out of the presidential race by the extreme- right Front National candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, causing Jospin to retire from politics. Laurent Fabius, former minister of finance, said that "the Left must now reflect, rebuild and come together" to fight the centre-right government. Jack Lang, another former Socialist minister, said that the party had "lost popular trust, as well as the trust of young people", who had not supported it in the parliamentary elections, preferring to abstain. Martine Aubry, a high-profile figure in the Socialist Party responsible for the flagship 35-hour working week introduced under the last government, lost her seat in parliament, as did the former Socialist minister of finance and now independent Jean-Pierre Chevènement. Meanwhile, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose Front National did not win a single seat in parliament, said that "I didn't expect to win any seats, and therefore I wasn't disappointed." Six million French voters, those who had voted FN, "will not be represented" in parliament, he said, which "only votes for 40 per cent of French legislation in any case, the rest being decided in Brussels", seat of the European Commission. The Front National had caused dismay in France and worldwide following its victory over the Socialists in the first round of the presidential elections, when it won 16.86 per cent of the vote. However, owing to France's electoral system, a national figure of this sort does not necessarily translate into seats in parliament, where a simple majority of the vote in each constituency is required. The second round of the parliamentary elections was the fourth set of elections in France in less than two months, all of which had been marked by unprecedented rates of abstention, as well as the rejection of the established parties and wildly swinging approval rates for President Chirac and for the centre-right. At the first round of the presidential elections, Chirac gained only 19.88 per cent of the vote, only a few per cent ahead of the formerly marginal FN candidate and the lowest approval rating ever scored by an incumbent president. A few weeks later in the second round on 5 May, Chirac gained 82 per cent of the vote, the highest ever recorded in a result interpreted as a vote against Le Pen rather than for Chirac. The weeks between the election's first and second rounds had seen a series of large demonstrations in Paris and elsewhere in France against the Front National, whose racist politics and victory over the Socialists in the first round was widely denounced as "a source of shame" for France. Since the resignation of the Socialist government on 6 May, an interim centre-right government led by the previously unknown Jean-Pierre Rafarin has been in power, its mandate now confirmed by Sunday's massive majority in the Assemblée Nationale. Having formed a new grouping, the UMP, to fight the parliamentary elections, the centre-right has put forward a programme of tax cuts, reinforcement and reform of the police and criminal-justice system and reform of the welfare state. On 29 May, Nicholas Sarkozy, head of an enlarged Ministry of the Interior and himself widely tipped to become prime minister before Raffarin's appointment, announced that the government would spend an additional six billion Euros over five years on the police and criminal-justice system if elected on 16 June. His opposite number at the Ministry of Justice announced that France would be reintroducing borstals for young offenders, closed in 1979 because of their violence, in an effort to halt the country's soaring crime rates among young people. Concerns over rising crime and immigration dominated the campaign, with Sarkozy visiting the controversial Sangatte refugee camp in the north of France and several "no-go" areas of French cities in an effort to impress his intention to deal with both issues on the French public. Immediately following his election victory on 5 May, Chirac announced his desire to lower income tax across the board by 5 per cent, legislation that may now be introduced. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, in his book Pour une nouvelle gouvernance (A New Way of Governing) published earlier this year, called for the reform of the state in order to bring government closer to the people and end "the crisis of trust" between governed and government. French commentators are stressing, however, that things will not be all plain sailing for the new government, largely because of the size of its majority, the lack of coherent opposition from a shattered left and the fact that the right now controls both parliament and presidency. Such a situation, they say, calls for concerted action by the new government to fulfill its election pledges, it having few excuses if it fails to do so. The last time the centre-right was in power in France, between 1995 and 1997 under the premiership of Alan Juppé, its attempts at reforming France's public sector and welfare system foundered on union opposition. The country was paralysed by a series of strikes, eventually returning the left to power.
