Conservatives Win Again in French Local Elections

The conservative parties of former President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and former Premier Jacques Chirac scored major gains in the second round of French local elections Sunday, thus strengthening their threat to overturn the ruling Socialist Party in next year’s election of the National Assembly.

While these parties took control of 10 French departments away from the Socialists and Communists, the extreme-right party of Jean-Marie Le Pen, which dominated the headlines during the election campaign, appeared to have failed to turn the attention into significant electoral impact.

Le Pen’s National Front did win a race in the southern city of Marseilles, marking the first time it had ever won a campaign anywhere in France in an election for domestic office without the help of a voting system of proportional representation. That system helped give the front an entry into the European Parliament. But early returns indicated that the party had been defeated everywhere else on Sunday.

Asked why the National Front had failed to win more seats, Le Pen replied, “That’s not important. Our aim was to beat the left.” Le Pen said that his candidates stepped aside to support the regular conservative candidates when the latter had the best chance to defeat a leftist.

Leaders of the two regular conservative parties--the rightist Rally for the Republic of Chirac and the right-center Union for French Democracy of Giscard and former Premier Raymond Barre--claimed that the results of the two rounds of what are known as cantonal elections have proven they represent a majority of French voters.

However, there was a good deal of uncertainty about whether such local elections really indicate how the French will vote in the National Assembly elections of March, 1986.

Moreover, many analysts expect President Francois Mitterrand to introduce a new law to install a system of proportional representation for the assembly voting. Even if the two conservative parties next year were to win the same percentage of votes that they polled in the cantonal elections, proportional representation might keep them from winning a majority and allow the Socialists to try to govern with the help of some smaller parties.

In the two rounds, the voters elected representatives from their cantons--much like American counties--to the general council of each department. France and its overseas territories are divided, for the purposes of administration, into 100 departments.

Even before the two rounds of elections, the Rally for the Republic and the Union for French Democracy controlled a majority of the departments. But, as the returns piled up, it appeared that they would now control at least 68 of the departments.

Some of the Socialist losses were spectacular. They lost control in Isere, home of the mountain resort of Grenoble and regarded as the political fiefdom of Louis Mermaz, the Socialist president of the National Assembly. They also lost control of the southeastern department of Var, which had been in Socialist hands for decades.

Not all France voted in the cantonal elections. Paris did not vote since it is a department by itself and its municipal council serves as the general council. Only half the council seats were up for election in the rest of France.