FRENCH voters returned to the polling booths yesterday for the second round of local elections that are expected to deal a new blow to the governing Socialist Party.

They cast ballots for 4,108 local councillors in 98 departmental councils.

The first round showed the right-wing opposition led by Nicolas Sarkozy in pole position, with the far-right National Front (FN) in second place ahead of Prime Minister Manuel Valls’s Socialists (PS).

The PS government’s slavish devotion to neoliberal orthodoxy in office, despite electoral campaign pledges, has alienated many of its traditional supporters.

It has also precipitated previously unseen developments between the Communist Party-led Front de Gauche (FdG), sections of the Green Party (EELV) and parts of the left of the PS on an anti-austerity platform.

The FdG and its allies got a creditable 9.4 per cent in the first round last Sunday.

No sooner were the main results known last Monday than the leaderships of all the left parties, including the PS, called for maximum united action in the run-offs.

The left’s second-round goals are to win as many seats as possible, stem the loss of PS-held and FdG-run departmental councils — the Communist Party holds two and the Left Radicals four — and prevent the right, particularly the FN, from making further progress.

The main aim of the FdG, sections of the increasingly divided EELV and the growing left within the PS is to work towards creating an alternative force based on basic left values.

by Our Foreign Desk