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Ex-Socialist heads for local election win despite anti-Semitic comment

As candidates formalised their lists this week for the upcoming regional elections in France, the Socialists have mounted a campaign against gaffe-prone former party member, Georges Frêche, claiming that a remark he made about former Socialist Prime Minister Laurent Fabius was anti-Semitic. But the strategy looks set to fail, as polls put him in the lead.

Photo: Reuters
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Frêche, who was kicked out of the party in 2007 for making racist comments, looks set to hold onto the leadership of the regional council of Languedoc-Rousillon, in the south of the country, despite making what was considered an anti-Semitic comment about Fabius.

In a profile of the former MP published at the end of January, the Express magazine quoted Frêche as saying that Fabius ”doesn't look very Catholic”. Fabius’s father was Jewish, though he was baptised Catholic, although the phrase pas Catholique can be used colloquially to mean unconventional or dodgy.

Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry reacted furiously against the comment, and decided to run a Socialist list against Frêche, headed by the mayor of Montpellier, Hélène Mandroux.

"The honour of the left has been put into question," said Aubry, defending the decision to run a list against the popular politician.

An opinion poll gives Frêche a comfortable lead, with Mandroux coming in last both in the first and second rounds of voting.

Frêche would get 31 per cent of the votes, with the UMP candidate coming in second with 22 per cent, according to an OpinionWay/Fiducial survey conducted for Le Figaro and LCI published Tuesday. Mandroux would come in behind the Greens and other left-wing candidates, with six per cent.

Even if she joined a left-wing coalition for the second round, Mandroux would come in 27 per cent, behind Frêche, with 41 per cent, and the UMP with 32 per cent.

The poll results show that the comment did not seem to harm Frêche, who defended his statement.

"The expression I used means ‘to not have confidence in someone’,” he said in a letter of explanation published a few days after the initial comments.

"Those comments clearly have an anti-Semitic character,” Fabius responded, adding that Frêche is “someone who is very cultured, who has important responsibilities and who is not on his first blunder”.

Frêche is regularly called out for making off-colour or racist comments. In 2007 he was kicked out of the Socialist party for making comments about the racial make-up of the French football team. But the party continued to run the region in coalition with him until now.

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