France’s Far-Right National Front Gains in Regional Elections
By ALISSA J. RUBIN

PARIS — The far-right party of Marine Le Pen was poised to make major gains after the first round of voting in regional French elections on Sunday in the wake of terrorist attacks that traumatized the country last month.

When the votes were counted, Ms. Le Pen’s National Front party was pulling far ahead in two of France’s 13 regions and leading in four others. Trailing were the right-leaning parties, including the Republicains, led by former President Nicolas Sarkozy. Even further behind were the Socialists, whose best-known figure is President François Hollande.

Appearing before her supporters, Ms. Le Pen called it a “magnificent” result, saying the National Front was “the only party that can reconquer the lost territories of the republic, of Calais, where we won 50 percent of the votes, or of the suburbs.” What Ms. Le Pen described as “lost territories” were the French city of Calais on the English Channel, which now has more than 4,000 migrants on its doorstep hoping to reach Britain, and the suburbs of major French cities, many of which have sizable Muslim populations.

The National Front “is the only party to defend an authentically French republic,” she added, and to be dedicated to “the preservation of our way of life.”

With 93 percent of the votes counted, the turnout nationwide was expected to be about 50 percent, slightly higher than for the last regional elections in 2010.

The second round of voting next Sunday will determine the final results. In the last several elections the National Front has done well in the first round but found it harder to sustain gains in the second, when other competing parties have united or withdrawn to keep the far right from winning.

However, this time the high numbers for the National Front in a number of places suggest that the old political calculus may not hold, especially if the more traditional conservatives led by Mr. Sarkozy refuse to join with the Socialists to form a bloc.

Mr. Sarkozy announced after his party’s second-place showing that its candidates would not join with other parties or withdraw from the race.

In contrast, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the head of the Socialist Party, said that its candidates would withdraw from the elections in the two regions where the National Front did best — the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region in northeastern France and the Provence-Alpes-Côte-Azur region in the south — and that elsewhere it would join with other parties.

“The party of the extreme right threatens many regions of France,” Mr. Cambadélis said.

“The left is, then, the last rampart of Republican France against the xenophobic extreme right,” he said, calling on all the left-leaning parties to join together to defeat the National Front.

Ms. Le Pen and her party have thrived on an anti-immigration message that has veered on anti-Muslim, as well as a call for re-establishing European borders. These notions had already found traction as France faced an influx of Muslim immigrants from war-afflicted areas of the world. But she gained even more momentum after the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, in which 130 people were killed.

However, several analysts said it was important not to overplay the recent attacks in explaining her success. Rather, they see a long-term trend in which the National Front has gained ground in election after election. It has done so even more rapidly since Ms. Le Pen took leadership of the party from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011.

“The dynamic in favor of the National Front is not a superficial reaction of the French electorate in a situation of crisis after the attack,” said Bruno Cautrès, a political analyst and public opinion specialist at the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po.

“It is something more long lasting in the French political system,” he said.

The outcome will be read here as a forecast of the politics of the presidential election in 2017, but already Ms. Le Pen has changed the tenor of political debate in France. Across the political spectrum, politicians are taking a harder line on immigration, and there is a newfound willingness to reconsider the rules that govern the open borders among European Union countries.

“She had won before the vote,” said Joël Gombin, a political analyst at the Observatory for Radicalism at the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, a think tank.

“The old themes and proposals of the National Front have been reprised in the political debate, not only on the right but also, more and more, on the left and in particular in the voice of the executive branch, and that legitimizes the National Front,” he said.

Both Mr. Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls have evoked more nationalistic themes recently and taken a particularly hard line on security issues. Although the government is leans left, its leaders have begun to discuss extending the state of emergency, which gives law enforcement extraordinary powers, beyond its current duration of three months.

Public figures from different sides of the political spectrum urged voters to go to the polls on Sunday, not least of all because of worries from both the Socialist party and the Republicains that they would lose ground.

Both Ms. Le Pen, who heads the National Front list in the northeastern French region known as Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie, and her niece, Marion Maréchal Le Pen, who is heading the National Front list in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, are expected to become leaders of the regional councils in their respective regions.

法國地方選舉 極右政黨風光

法國6日舉行首輪地方選舉，出口民調顯示，主要由於伊斯蘭國（IS）三周前的巴黎恐攻發揮助選效應，立場極右、反移民的「民族陣線」領先所有政黨，其候選人得票率在全國新畫13個選區中的六個居冠，黨魁瑪琳．雷朋及其姪女瑪麗安．雷朋在各自選區的得票率甚至超過40%。

這次地方選舉是法國2017年總統大選前的最後一次選舉，可以視為法國政治的風向球。

前總統沙克吉領導的共和黨得票率預測27%，排第二位。現任總統歐蘭德的社會黨22.7%，排第三。

6日的民調預測重點是不同政黨的得票率，而非各黨可能獲得的地方議會席次。13日的決選由6日得票領先的政黨廝殺，決定席次。

上月13日130人喪生的IS巴黎恐攻記憶猶新，驚弓般的安全氣氛本來就有利保守與極右派的候選人，加上不斷氾濫歐洲的中東難民危機，對民族陣線都有催票作用。

民族陣線的行情從未如此風光，該黨有意趁這次地方選舉凝聚成果，可望首次拿下任一個選區，並為瑪琳．雷朋2017年問鼎總統大位來個先聲奪人。

瑪琳之父、民族陣線前領導人雷朋6日說，歷數法國政黨，「只有民族陣線維護純正的法蘭西共和國，純正的法蘭西共和國只有一個使命：民族利益、法國人的就業，保衛法國人的生活方式，發展我們的傳統，保衛所有法國人」。

現在的問題是，共和黨、社會黨及其他小黨能不能合力，13日擋住民族陣線。沙克吉說，為政者必須傾聽、了解民眾之怒，但如果讓民族陣線乘著這股怒潮勝選，「將造成法國處境急劇惡化，為危險的進一步失序製造條件」。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/world/europe/frances-far-right-national-front-gains-in-regional-elections.html

2015-12-07．聯合晚報．A6．國際焦點．編譯彭淮棟