Translated "Avante!" article by Angelo Alves, Member of the PCP Political Committee and of the International Department
The French presidential first-round elections results have pointed out a real possibility of having changes within the French policy. If the new president of the French Republic is to be Hollande, such a fact will be more Sarkosy’s defeat than a victory of the socialist candidate. However, the possibility of Sarkosy’s stepping down from the Élysée, is in itself a positive fact, owing to his racist, xenophobe, colonialist, bellicose and ultraliberal policies. Policies in many fields coincident with the retreaded Marine Le Pen’s National Front, a party which, joining the several far - right wing policy expressions, achieved a significant and concerning outcome (17,9%), but even so, did not come to the adding up of those same expressions in 2002, when Le Pen and Megret achieved 19% of the votes. All indicates that, on the contrary of what some analysts state, one is not before a significant reinforcement of the far-right wing or a “novelty”, but instead, before a recovery regarding 2007, achieved not by self-merit but by the clear field left behind by Sarkosy and his own policies.
The other change which took place during these elections, is the result of the Left Front candidate, a political group integrated by several political forces, namely the FCP, and which brought together 11% of the votes. Such a result, which follows a FCP’s painful defeat during the 2007 presidential elections, in which Marie George Buffet obtained 1,93%, expresses a Left Front real attraction capacity, non- dissociable from the economic and social crisis felt within France and the struggle processes which have taken place. But its implantation, and overall the FCP’s electoral and political influence recovery - upon an election which, for the very first time, appears diluted in a front and a time in which it yet suffers from the electoral, organic and political influence point of view the “mutation” process consequences, initiated by Robert Hue (currently not a FCP militant) - will have to be confirmed during the most important political battle the FCP and the Left Front have before them, the legislative elections on the 10 and 17th June next.
François Hollande, towards the second round, embraced much more the media “change” campaign and stated that whatever the French choose next Sunday, will have an impact throughout “ France, Europe and the World”. But in reality, analysing Hollande’s and the FSP’s political proposals, the conclusion one might withdraw is that very little or nothing will change in Europe and the World considering Hollande’s election. From the European issues - in which Hollande zigzags on what concerns the finishing touch strategy of a work issued from social-democracy and the right-wing, the neo-liberal, militarist and federalist European Union - unto the foreign policy - stating France will participate under his direction, in a military aggression to Syria - blinking to the far - right wing concerning immigration, what one has, is once more, what occurred during Barack Obama’s election, a huge campaign of the system’s survival amid a deep crisis, and , moreover, a retreading and whitening of a discredited social-democracy before the crisis, which with the right-wing and the capital, it created /gave birth to.
A discredited social-democracy, as well stated by the polls of other elections, that curiously or not, haven’t been mentioned: the Greek elections, that will also take place next Sunday. An election in which, if the polls are confirmed, the system’s two main parties (PASOK and the New Democracy) might loose half of their electorate and not be able to achieve (together) 50% of the votes. Therefore, both the elections in France and in Greece, prove the same thing in different ways: capitalism structural crisis deepening has not only economic and social reflexes, but begins to have effects over the bourgeois representation system, which politically nurtures the system itself.
