FRENCH President Francois Hollande’s slavish devotion to neoliberal policies delivered its reward for his Socialist Party (PS) through a landslide victory for the right in Sunday’s local elections.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy’s right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) took between 65 and 71 councils out of a possible 98.

“The results went far beyond local concerns. With their ballots French voters have massively rejected the policies of Francois Hollande and his government,” Mr Sarkozy told supporters at UMP headquarters in Paris

Although all councillors have been elected, there will be some horse-trading before the picture is totally clear.

The voting system was changed for these elections to provide a “binome” of one man and one woman per party standing jointly for each constituency.

Marine Le Pen’s far-right Islamophobic Front National, which took a quarter of the vote in the first round, gathered 62 seats nationwide but failed to win a single council.

It had hoped to carry the day in the Vaucluse department in the south of the country.

PS Prime Minister Manuel Valls admitted that his party had suffered clear setbacks, but he ignored popular discontent over his government’s austerity programme, blaming “distractions” and “divisions” among the left.

One bright spot for the PS was a victory in the southern department of Lozere that bucked the general trend.

Contrary to predictions, the Communist Party (PCF) retained its leadership of the Val de Marne department in the Paris region.

PCF national secretary Pierre Laurent recalled that his party had followed its first-round call for united left tickets with candidates from the Left Front and other forces with a second-round appeal for overall mobilisation to block the right and the far right.

“Hundreds of candidates from the left could not have won if the communists had not worked to bring the forces of the left together,” he said.

Mr Laurent urged further unity in action, pointing out that senate discussion of the “Macron Law” of neoliberal labour “reforms” on April 7 and a trade union mobilisation on April 9 offer opportunities to demonstrate resistance.

“More initiatives will be required. With my fellow communists, I will work actively to make change happen,” he declared.

by Our Foreign Desk