French press review 24 March 2015

You might have thought the French papers would have gotten over Sunday's first round departmental elections . . . not a bit of it. Five dailies to hand, five views of a blighted political landscape . . .

"France wracked by the tripartite system," laments the main headline in Le Monde, a reaction to yet another strong showing on Sunday by the far right Front National. With 25 per cent of votes cast, the party had their best-ever result in a departmental election, less than Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative UMP, but considerably more than the ruling socialists. The Front National may not have lived up to its own claims to be "the leading political party in France," but it has now confirmed its status as a bloc to be reckoned with by the traditional two-headed monster.

Catholic La Croix says the Front National will be present in more than half the second-round departmental shoot-outs next Sunday. To put that situation in perspective, it is unlikely that the Front National will actually take control of more than one or two departments. The real question is how the mainstream parties to the left and right are going to react to the fact that one quarter of French voters are now consistently impressed by Marine Le Pen's anti-European, anti-immigration, hyper-nationalism. If Sunday's voting pattern was repeated in the 2017 presidential poll, Le Pen would contest the second round against the mainstream conservative candidate.

La Croix says only Sunday's relatively high voter turn-out prevented Le Pen's outfit from topping the polls.

Crucially, an increased number of Front National councillors will mean increased difficulty for many departments in the management of social funds.

The catholic paper contrasts the approaches of the left and right to the extremist surge: the socialists have called for republican unity, the conservatives are insisting on the neither-nor tactic, asking right-wing voters to support neither the socialists nor the Front National.

Left-leaning Libération says the task for the left is now to re-unite the socialist bloc, ravaged by doubt and division on, notably, the way what's left of the French economy is being managed. If the socialists and their former allies on the left are not prepared to iron out their internal differences, warns Libé, their candidate will finish a poor third in the first round of 2017's presidential battle.

It is time to end the rhetorical posturing, the self-serving display, the theoretical tantrums. If you combine last Sunday's vote for the socialists, Jean-Luc Mélenchon's Leftist Front, and the gas-burning Greens, the combined forces of the French left can wipe the in-fighting conservatives off the map. Otherwise, the left itself will go down the tubes.

Life goes on beyond the horizon dominated by the French departments.

In Ukraine, for example. According to Libération, despite the Russian invasion, the annexation of the Crimea, the departure of Viktor Yanukovych, business is very much as usual for the rich individuals who have always controlled the country.

Or perhaps, even more so.

Libé describes how oil billionaire Igor Kolomoisky last week sent his private army to take control of a refinery near Kiev. Kolomoisky says he did it to protect the interests of the people. If Libération is to be believed, he might in fact have taken over the refinery in order to maintain his own lucrative grasp on a facility which produces 3 million tonnes of oil and 4 million cubic metres of gas each year.