Front national

Robert Ménard, co-founder of the renowned NGO Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières), which has mounted a fierce global campaign over almost a quarter of a century to promote freedom of expression and to defend journalists from persecution, was last weekend elected mayor of Béziers, a large town in southern France. But Ménard’s political ascension has proved to be a severe embarrassment for the NGO, for he was elected with the full backing of France’s far-right Front National party. With the help of Ménard’s former colleagues, Marine Turchi traces the bizarre path of the admired and reviled maverick activist whose early political affiliation was with a French Trotskyist party.  

The dust has settled after the first round of voting in nationwide municipal elections in France, and a new political landscape has emerged even before the final round of voting next Sunday. Amid an abstention rate of more than 36%, the ruling Socialist Party has suffered a heavy defeat, likely to become a debacle in the second round. But it is the far-right Front National party which can claim victory, and not the mainstream conservative opposition. Hubert Huertas analyses the first-round results which see the far-right now become a part of the fabric of local politics in France. 

France is gearing up for municipal elections later this month when, political observers and opinion poll surveys forecast, the far-right Front National party is set to make significant gains. Its leader, Marine Le Pen, lays claim strong support among blue-collar workers, as illustrated by the vote the party attracted among a significant number of former left-wing heartlands during the 2012 presidential and legislative elections. This relatively recent development is often interpreted as a swing of allegiance on the part of a disillusioned electorate of the Left. But that perception is a myth according to the results of detailed studies by sociologists Nonna Mayer and Florent Gougou. They presented their research at a Paris conference on voting patterns for the far-right, where Marine Turchi recorded their sometimes surprising findings.    

When abattoir employees David and Stéphanie watched TV reports of workers in bitter disputes with bosses over factory closures, they insisted it could never happen to them. Their abattoir in Brittany was reputed to provide 'jobs for life'. But then last October the news struck that the plant was to close, leaving David, Stéphanie and more than 800 other workers out of a job. Here the couple tell Mediapart's Rachida El Azzouzi about their shock at being thrown out of work, their anger at the government in Paris and explain why for the first time they intend to vote for Marine Le Pen's far-right party.