Voters Again Shun France’s Ruling Socialists

Embattled Prime Minister Edith Cresson narrowly won a runoff election Sunday for a regional council seat, and one of her Cabinet ministers lost as the governing Socialists suffered their second poor election showing in a week.

The results reinforced expectations of a major Cabinet shake-up within the next few days, possibly including the ouster of Cresson as prime minister.

The Socialists and their allies, who entered the runoffs controlling councils in only 21 of France’s 100 departments, lost five of those to an alliance of conservatives while gaining only one.

Partial returns showed Socialist-backed candidates getting 32% of the vote, compared to 57% for the conservatives. A week earlier, the Socialists won only 18% of the votes in the opening round of the regional elections.

Socialist Party leader Laurent Fabius called Sunday’s results “a serious failure” and pledged to work for an overhaul of the party.

Cresson had been favored to beat a conservative challenger in her home town of Chatellerault for a seat on the council that administers the department of Vienne. But the vote was closer than expected, a 3,211 to 3,037 victory that gave her little cause for celebration.

Two polls released Sunday indicated that only about a fourth of the public wants Cresson to stay on as prime minister.

The elections boosted the strength of the far-right National Front and two environmentalist parties. The two groupings won 13.9% of the votes in the opening round March 22.

Six members of Cresson’s Cabinet also were on runoff ballots Sunday, and one, Social Affairs Minister Jean-Louis Bianco, was defeated.

The alliance of France’s two main conservative parties, which led the March 22 round with 33% of the vote, increased its dominance at the departmental level. It entered the election controlling 68 departments and emerged with a net gain of four.