French left wins regional elections

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, March 29, 2004

French left wins regional elections

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French left coalition won the second round of regional elections by taking between 49-50 percent of the vote, while French President Jacques Chirac's right polled between 37-38 percent, French Interior Ministry announced Sunday.

Initial official figures showed that Chirac's ruling party, theconservative Union for a Popular Movement (UMP, right) and its coalition partner, Union for French Democracy (UDF, center-right),got 38 percent of the vote, against 50 percent for the Socialist Party (PS) and its Green and Communist allies, which took control of 21 out of 23 regions. The far-right National Front (FN) won about 12 percent.

The result confirmed the outcome of last Sunday's first round, in which the center-right took 34 percent, the left, 40 percent and the FN 10 percent.

The outcome will make Chirac reshuffle the current government and probably change his Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.

Raffarin acknowledged on national television the government's failure, saying however that its economic and social reform policies could not be changed.

"I am sure the French do not want a return to immobility. Reforms must be continued simply because they are necessary," theprime minister said.

Some 42 million of voters, or 67 percent of electorate, cast their vote in the second round, against some 60 percent in the first round.

"The electorate has justly pronounced a heavy rejection of the whole of Jean-Pierre Raffarin's government. They have rejected a policy which for two years has deepened inequalities, intensified social tensions and despised the weak," reaffirmed PS leader Francois Hollande.

Government's unpopular reforms, such as budget cuts and the legislation banning headscarves in state schools, have led to strikes among research staffs, doctors, firemen, actors and railway workers, actors and railway workers.

"We have to ask ourselves one question. Must we now abandon theroad of transforming French society? I don't think so. Stopping the reforms -- as the opposition is demanding -- would be to lead the country to immobility and regression," said Alain Juppe, UMP president and former prime minister.

Source: Xinhua

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