France’s ruling Socialist Party suffered a humiliating defeat on Sunday by losing a parliamentary by-election to replace disgraced former budget minister Jérôme Cahuzac, reports FRANCE 24.
Socialist Bernard Barral came in third place in the poll in the south-western Lot-et-Garonne department, behind the candidate representing the far-right National Front (FN), who moves to the second round against the nominee of the right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party.
The UMP’s Jean-Louis Costes, a local mayor, won 28.7% of the vote, while the FN’s Etienne Bousquet-Cassagne (pictured left in main) claimed 26% support.
Barral took just 23.7% of ballots in an election with very low turn-out, ensuring the Socialists will lose one seat in the lower-house National Assembly, where they will nevertheless maintain an absolute majority.
French President François Hollande said that the results of the election were a repercussion of the tax-evasion scandal that forced Cahuzac to resign as the country’s budget minister and as an MP in April.
“When there are scandals, and in this case there was one, there is always the temptation to vote for the far right,” Hollande said in an interview with M6 television on Sunday evening.
After weeks of denying media reports that he once had a secret bank account in Switzerland, Cahuzac finally admitted on April 2 that he had stashed away thousands of euros from the tax man.
The run-off vote between the UMP and FN candidates for Cahuzac’s former seat in parliament will be held on June 23.
Jean-Francois Copé, presidet of the main opposition UMP party, said the election result was another “scathing repudiation of François Hollande and his policies.”
Nevertheless, the Socialist candidate Barral called his supporters to rally behind the UMP candidate Costel in a so-called Republican Front to oppose a political advance by the anti-immigration National Front.
Socialist Party chief Harlem Désir also urged voters to ensure the FN candidate did not win the upcoming second-round poll.
Read more of this report from FRANCE 24.
See also: The Cahuzac affair: an A-Z of Mediapart's exclusive investigations and analysis