Socialists outpoll Sarkozy’s party in municipal elections
French voters Sunday gave the edge to the Socialist opposition in municipal elections that shook up the center-right party of President Nicolas Sarkozy. But the president’s aides said he would not halt his program of national reform.
The runoff vote in about 900 towns where mayoral races were undecided in the first round the previous weekend sent a hard punch at Sarkozy and his Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP. Sarkozy came into office in May by defeating Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal.
Royal said Sunday night in television interviews that the French electorate had delivered a “vote of sanction” aimed at Sarkozy as a punishment for his unpresidential behavior and policies, such as his effort to overhaul the state health system.
But Xavier Bertrand, Sarkozy’s employment minister, said the local elections were not the “return game of the presidential elections.”
“If Segolene was right, the French would have voted for her during the presidential elections,” he said in an interview on French television.
Bertrand said it was “impossible to say what the French meant and didn’t mean” by this vote.
Other Sarkozy aides were quoted as saying there would be no major shifts in his administration’s efforts to make France more competitive in the world.
“The policy of France, the voters chose it at the presidential and parliamentary elections,” Prime Minister Francois Fillon said.
“After 10 months of intensive reforms, you are still expecting a lot from us,” Fillon said. “You remind us of our goals: reaching full employment and starting a long-term dynamic in favor of purchasing power.”
Socialists won 49.5% of the overall vote compared with the UMP’s 47.5%. The rest went to centrists. The extreme-right party, the National Front, did not win a single town hall.
Socialists reclaimed control in several cities, including Toulouse, Strasbourg and Caen, from the UMP. But the incumbent UMP mayor of Marseille, the nation’s third-largest city and a Sarkozy stronghold, was narrowly reelected.
The local elections were, for the most part, a mix of up-close issues and personality matchups. For example, a UMP newcomer in Calais took the City Hall after four decades of Communist leadership.
And in Pau, a southern city, Francois Bayrou, the centrist in the May presidential race who had been a favorite to win, lost his bid to be mayor.
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Achrene Sicakyuz in The Times’ Paris Bureau contributed to this report.
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