The aftermath of the abstentionist earthquake of the first round of the regional elections of last June 20 was just as resounding on this Sunday, June 27, in the second round. With an abstention rate of 65.7%, compared to the 66.7% on June 20, “voting general strike” marks the beginning of a new phase of the political crisis and of the rotten regime of the Fifth Republic.
Despite the blaming campaign led by the government, the political class and the media during the interim to “save democracy”, and despite the accusations of the candidates, nothing was done. A mere 1% more turnout was registered (about 480 thousand voters). The determination of the masses to refuse to support an anti-democratic electoral farce is total. It is a political fact: the abstention is forged in the massive rejection of Macron, of his policies and of all the parties subordinated to the Fifth Republic.
Thus, according to an Ipsos/Sopra Steria poll conducted on the evening of June 27, 27% of the non-voters surveyed wanted to express their “dissatisfaction with politicians in general”. According to 23% of respondents, “no list or candidate” represented them. In a June 20 poll (first round), Ipsos even estimated that 18% of non-voters had expressed their “discontent towards the government and Emmanuel Macron”. Such a level of distrust has never been seen before.
Abstention remains in the majority in all regions except Corsica: Grand Est 69.7% (70.8% on June 20), Pays de la Loire 68.3% (69.8%), Ile de France 66.7% (67.5%), Centre-Val de Loire 66.9% (67%), Normandy 67. 1% (67%), Hautes-de-France 66.8% (67%), Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur 63.2% (66.3%), Burgundy-Franche-Comté 63.5% (65.8%), Auvergne Rhône-Alpes 66.6% (65.1%), Brittany 63.4% (64%), New Aquitaine 63.4% (62.9%), Occitania 62.2% (61.4%), Corsica 41.1% (44.1%).
Abstention is overwhelming in all age groups except those over 70: 79% of those aged 18 to 24, 79% aged 25 to 34, 75% aged 35 to 49, 62% aged 50 to 59, 61% aged 60 to 69, 42% among those over 70. The 18 to 59 age group abstained with 73.7%! Abstention remains the overwhelming majority among employees (75%), blue collar workers (73%), intermediate professions (70%) and bosses (63%). Retirees abstained by 49%. Abstention is higher among women (67%) than among men (64%).
In the working class cities, the second abstentionist wave is as violent as the first: Vaulx-en-Velin 87.4% (88.3% on 20/6), Clichy-sous-Bois 86.7% (88%), Vénissieux 82.9% (83.2%), Roubaix 82.4% (vs. 83%), Longwy 79. 8% (vs. 81%), Manches 81. 4% (81%), Villeneuve-Saint-Georges 77% (81%), Vitry-sur-Seine 76.3% (77.6%), Trappes 71.5% (77%), Orly 73% (76%), Le Havre 74.1% (74.8%), Mantes-la-Jolie 73.5% (74%), Saint-Nazaire 70.5% (71.4%)….
Tal vez te interese: Francia: de la huelga del voto a la rebelión abstencionista
The collapse of Macron and LREM[1]. Never in the history of the Fifth Republic had a ruling party suffered such a bitter electoral defeat. The presidential party, LREM, obtained only 7% of the votes cast, systematically placing itself behind LR[2], the PS and its allies. It did not conquer any region and only saved one departmental council: Guadeloupe. Hated by the masses, Macron’s party and candidates are rejected. Consequently, LREM and its allies (in particular Agir, UDI and MoDEM) must be satisfied with only a few crumbs in the regional councils. They “win” 7 seats out of 100 in Burgundy-Franche-Comté, 15 out of 209 in Ile-de-France, 7 out of 102 in Normandy, 18 out of 183 in New Aquitaine, 5 out of 93 in Pays-de-la-Loire, 9 out of 77 in Centre-Val-de-Loire and 15 out of 169 in the Grand Est. Nothing in Auvergne Rhône-Alpes, Occitania and Hauts-de-France. As for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region, let’s recall that in the first round LREM ran behind the LR flag and its head of list, Renaud Muzelier. After the slap in the municipal elections, LREM suffered a beating in the regional elections.
The debacle of Marine Le Pen’s RN-FN[3]. To measure the extent of the electoral collapse of the RN-FN, a single figure could suffice: in the second round of the 2015 regionals, the FN-RN drew nationally 6,820,447 votes (27.1%), 15% of the electoral roll. On June 27, it drew 2,908,253 votes (19%), 6.3% of the electoral roll, that is, a bleeding of 3.9 million votes!
The consequences are serious, for example in the three main regions where the RN-FN is present:
Hauts-de-France: in 2015 it drew 1.01 million votes, 42.2% of the votes cast, or 23.9% of the roll. On June 27, it drew 346,918 votes, a loss of 668,744 votes, and represented 8.2% of the roll.
Gran Est: in 2015 it drew 790,141 votes, 36.1% of the votes cast, or 20.3% of the roll. On June 27 it drew 290,552 votes, a loss of 499,589 votes, and represented 7.5% of the roll.
Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur: in 2015 it drew 886,147 votes, 45.2% of the votes cast, or 25.1% of the roll. On June 27, it drew 524,881 votes, a loss of 361,266 votes, and represented 14.6% of the roll.
The drop in the number of elected officials is severe: Hauts-de-France 32 now against 54 in 2015, Occitania 28 now against 40 in 2015, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes 17 now against 34 in 2015, Grand Est 33 now against 46 in 2015, Ile de France 16 now against 22 in 2015, Normandy 15 now against 21 in 2015, Pays-de-la-Loire 7 now against 13 in 2015, Burgundy-Franche-Comté 18 now against 24 in 2015, Brittany 8 now against 12 in 2015, Centre-Val-de-Loire 13 now against 17 in 2021….
According to Jean-Marie Le Pen[4], who never spares any mockery, the results of the RN are the consequence of its “demonization”, the “de-lepenization” of the party and its new compatibility with the Fifth Republic and its institutions. It seems that the RN lost the heart and soul of what was historically the French extreme right. If Le Pen says so…
The return of the LR and the PS? In the shuffle, the electorate of the outgoing regional executive branches was, by comparison, less abstentionist. The famous “exit bonus” is obviously only relative, a false electoral victory can mask a real political defeat.
Thus, the big winner of June 27 would be the Republican Right, and mainly LR, which won 7 regions and 64 departments. Really? Let us see what this “victory” corresponds to.
In 2015, on the night of the ballot of the regional elections, at the national level, the “Republican Right” took 10,127,617 votes, 40.2% of the votes cast, or 22.3% of the electoral roll. On June 27, 2021, it received 5,789,046 votes, a loss of 4.3 million votes, or 12.6% of the electoral roll. Curious “victory” when the winner loses almost 43% of its electorate from one election to the next! Curious “victory” when we know that one of the main figures on which the bourgeoisie is betting, Xavier Bertrand, is not part of LR, or that Muzelier, who was on a list with LREM since the first round, overlooked the slogans of LR and is even asked to be expelled.
In the meantime, the “institutional left”, and above all the PS, claims to be satisfied with the results. The “exit bonus” worked and the PS kept the five regions it led with its allies: New Aquitaine, Occitania, Brittany, Centre-Val-de-Loire, Burgundy-Franche-Comté. But satisfied with what? In 2015, in the regional balloting, at the national level, the “institutional left” took 8,083,168 votes, or 32.1% of the votes cast, or 17.8% of the electoral roll. On June 27, the “institutional left” pulled 5,305,173 votes, a loss of 2.7 million votes, or 11.5% of the electoral roll. The “institutional left” is therefore satisfied to have lost more than 35% of its electorate between 2015 and 2021! Is the “left” satisfied with the call by Manuel Valls and Jean-Paul Huchon to vote for Valérie Pécresse in Île-de-France, refusing to vote for a list allied with Mélenchon and the FI[5]? Also in Ile-de-France, the “union of the left” list led by Julien Bayou (EELV[6]), with Audrey Pulvar (PS with the PCF) and Clémentine Autain (FI), achieved the feat in the ballot, “united”, a score lower than the sum of their respective results of the first round. Finally, the PCF lost its last historical stronghold: the department of Val-de-Marne. After the loss of the department of Seine-Saint-Denis and the defeats suffered in the 2020 municipal elections, the loss of Val-de-Marne comes to sign the inexorable demise of the Stalinist party.
Of “left”, right or center, those elected struck by illegitimacy! Abstention removed all legitimacy from the ballot box (essential in the Fifth Republic) from those elected on June 27. As proof of this, in Hauts-de-France, Bertrand is elected with 52% of the votes, i.e. only 16.7% of the electoral roll. In Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Wauquiez was elected with 57% of the votes, i.e. 17.8% of the electoral roll. In Île-de-France, Pécresse was elected with 47% of the votes, or less than 15% of the electoral roll. In Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Muzelier received 57.3% of the votes, or 19% of the vote. In Bourgogne Franche-Comté, France’s best-elected regional president, Carole Delga (PS), received 57% of the vote, or 20.1% of the vote. In Centre-Val-de-Loire, François Bonneau was elected with 39.1% of the votes, or 12.4% of the electoral roll. In New Aquitaine, Alain Rousset was elected with 39.5% of the votes, that is to say 13.7% of the electoral roll…
In conclusion, the collapse is generalized. Framed by the class struggle, from the El Khomri law to the (anti)labor law; the decrees, from 49-3 to the movement of the yellow vests, from the strike against the pension law to the health crisis, the regional elections have clearly shown the anger roaring in the population. Above all anger against Macron, the president of the rich; against his policies, his government and his majority. But also anger towards all those whom the masses consider responsible for the continuous deterioration of their condition of existence and life. It is the whole political “class”, that is to say all the parties domesticated by the bourgeoisie and the Fifth Republic, which was defeated. Unemployment, precariousness, poverty, low wages, scarcity, down with no more!
The bourgeoisie, Macron and his clique know this perfectly well and are not unaware of the “social risks” inherent in the situation. But what can they do but continue their dirty work and “reform”, i.e. make the workers, youth, retired and unemployed pay the price of the crisis of capitalism. Like sharks, one must swim to avoid drowning. Macron will have no choice but to continue to implement his anti-social, anti-worker, anti-youth and anti-immigrant policies. Silent as a fish about the election results, yet Macron declared that the defeats of 15 of his ministers on June 27 would not provoke any change in his political line. However, a “technical” change is not entirely excluded. The line will not change.
The proof, since the evening of June 28, Macron received under the gold of the Palace of Versailles, and in the framework of the “Choose France” summit[7], a hundred heads of foreign multinationals (Intel, Netflix, Siemens, JP Morgan, Thyssen- Krups, Adecco, Moderna…) to praise the merits and advantages of France (above all, of its policy) for investors. The red carpet is rolled out for the exploiters, starvers, warmongers, all honors go to the heralds of imperialist capitalism. At the same time, Macron invites the “social partners”, bosses and unions, to a social summit between July 5 and 9. During the last cabinet meeting before the “summer break”, Macron will officially announce the reforms to which he is committed before the end of his mandate: pensions, old age and youth.
Already Laurent Berger, the reformist secretary general of the CFDT[8] warns: “The CFDT is opposed to a simple and brutal increase in the retirement age”. He warns, “Doing so this fall is politically crazy through and through and socially it will be explosive.” However, Berger and the CFDT remain in favor of establishing a universal points-based retirement plan[9]. For Martinez, secretary general of the CGT, the CGT “is preparing the necessary mobilization to oppose new attacks and raise the demand for a solidarity pay-as-you-go pension system with new rights”. Clearly, the CGT will be a “force of proposal” and will not practice empty chair politics. The more the masses go to the left, the more the apparatuses go to the right. Macron can thus count on his union foremen to muzzle the working class. The bureaucratic union leaderships received one and the same mandate from the millions of strikers in December 2019: withdrawal of the Macron law on pensions! Nothing else! The union leaders must not sit at the negotiating table!
Between the Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, supporter of the announcement and rapid implementation of the rise from 62 to 64 years of the legal retirement age, and Jean-Pierre Raffarin, more prudent (the experience of social explosions?) who believes that “the French must be relatively calm to think well”, the road to “reform” is narrow for Macron. If Macron knows that he can count on the “left” bourgeois and the bureaucratic trade union apparatuses to resist, he also knows that the electoral campaign for the presidential election has opened. If the masses are not interested in it, the arm wrestling is largely initiated on the right and left. There are even a lot of candidates already declared or almost declared: Bertrand, Pécresse and Wauquiez (LR) are in the catbird seat, Marine Le Pen (RN), Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), Fabien Roussel (PCF), Yannick Jadot, Eric Piolle and Sandrine Rousseau (EELV), Philippe Poutou (NPA), Anne Hidalgo, the PS intendant in Paris, who has a wide patronage in the PS. Soon there will be more candidates than voters, but there will always be fewer candidates than strikers and demonstrators!
In politics, the masses act by elimination. The ultra-mass abstention of June 27 means that there is not much left before the rupture. To overthrow Macron, and to defend its material and moral interests, the working class can only count on its own forces. More than ever, the existence of a worker’s party worthy of the name is required. With the International Socialist League, this is what La Commune militates for.
The Commune
Paris, 2/7/21