The recent regional elections in France proved that have been evolved in the context of emerging and immediately ending the Front National alarm. While the Front National (FN) won six of thirteen regions in the first round of the elections, in the second one it managed to lose them all. Les Republicains achieved to win the election in the second run, prevailing finally in seven regions.
The French people went to the polls almost a month after the dramatic blow of the ISIS in the center of Parisian life. Before life overtake the horror, the French had to express their political position at that time. For many analysts, there, in the above sentence, exists the meaning of the increased rates of the FN. The ten percentage increase in political participation in the second round, especially there that FN marked the highest points, and the fact that many socialist citizens supported candidates from the right spectrum, indicate the awakening as an attempt to counter the extreme right.
However, an important conclusion must not be missed, namely that FN, now, is supported by more citizens than the previous five years. This suggests that in the social context of France, the ideas of anti-immigration and anti – Islamism are seeking and perhaps found a political exponent. This means that these ideas have established to a large extend in France.
Nicolas Sarkozy is at the head of the center-right in France because two years ago the position that the embankment strategy was necessary for (then) UMP at the expense of far-right rhetoric of Marine Le Pen, was prevailed in UMP. The criticism against this position was important, even from members and politicians of the same party. This criticism was associated with the very low popularity ratings of Sarkozy, which accompanied his return in 2014.
The inclination of society to extreme political positions, especially to them of the right part of the political axis, is driven in difficult economic circumstances, which are likely to irritate the nationalist feelings of society. At that moment, xenophobia is gaining ground.
In the minds of French society, Nicolas Sarkozy is part of the economic status quo, which reinforced the austerity policies across Europe. Additionally the political presence of Nicolas Sarkozy is accompanied by rumors about financial scandals, which rumors incite feelings of political depreciation.
Is Nicolas Sarkozi able to confront Marine Le Pen by himself, encouraging a really hard right agenda?
In this context it is easy to interpret the attitude of many candidates, that were supported from Les Republicains, in regional elections, who, particularly in the second round, prevented the involvement and presence of Nicolas Sarkozy and other main representatives of the central policy from their campaigns.
Regional elections can only offer limited political conclusions. However, these elections were a crash test for Les Republicains and the Socialists. The Socialists have understood their weakness. They left two central regions, so their supporters to vote centre right candidates and the region not to be won by the far right. A fine convergence attitude that may lead to political benefits for Holland in the future.
From the other side, the thought of Sarkozy that the French people pursued a hard right policy, but at the same time they afraid of the exercise of this policy by Marine Le Pen, involves risk. It is uncertain whether the victory of Sarkozy in these regional elections is succeeded because of getting votes from Le Pen. Perhaps, this victory is because of socialists did not supported their party, but they indeed supported Sarkozi, just to prevent Le Pen, from winning. Unstable voting?
In other words, the victory may have been a rescue operation of an unfortunate strategy of Sarkozy, which rescue would not have achieved, unless Socialists voted for Sarko.
The unpopular Hollande in France and the popularity of Hollande for a significant part of European associations, forms a complex situation to be addressed for the strategy of Sarkozy. Sarkozy’s strategy appears to be geared primarily within the country in order to address social and economic issues and to exploit the weakness of Socialists in this part.
However, Sarkozi, in the interior policy, meets Marine Le Pen, and subsequently Les Republicains tend to be more crucial and radical, because Front National is not vulnerable or with tendancies to the centre. It is commonplace moderate forces programmatically attracted by extremes the time the former is trying to address the latter.
This oftentimes results in the programmatic deterioration of that moderate party (Sarkozy) and strengthen the moderate rival (Holland), who was not involved with the limitation of the limb. The limb is always strengthened, as it is legitimatized.
The question about whether Sarkozy is the right man at the right place at the right time of France will be answered next year, in which he also will decide whether to run for candidate for the nomination for the Presidential elections of 2017. Until then there is plenty of time for anyone to think about what is the political message that is conveyed through these recent elections.