The return of the two-headed eagle in France

On Sunday evening, the French voters have to choose definitively their mayors. It's the run-off or the second round of the mayoral elections, which throw some trouble upon the forums and debates, since the last ballot evening. As a matter of fact, the rosy wave or the huge socialist wave, which has been announced widely in the media, didn't reach the beach of the mainstream media where one may wait for the great evening or the victory of the left wing.

Actually, the Socialist Party won the mayoral elections. But the leftists couldn't reach the national level of a referendum, which might have denounced the government of France by Sarkozy's policy. The ballot was confined to some local policy and drama. So, this little consequence of the ballot should become the strongest reason of the rightists for maintaining their tough line of policy launched by the Prime Minister Fillon's government.

Abroad, the whole international press and media express harsh criticism against Sarkozy. Obviously, the French people castigate widely their president. Meanwhile, one can read the same words of mockery surging in the newspapers from London to New York. Nevertheless, these voices of harsh criticism don't mean some real expression of the widest electorate in France. Thus, the rightist part of the electorate is quite fencing at such a level of skill that one could see easily they have greatly lowered the victory of the socialist party.

Besides, nobody could say where the MoDem (the Democratic Movement) or the centrist party of Francois Bayrou is really working. Sometimes the centrists back naturally the rightist contenders and winners, for the Center is traditionally a rightist party. On the other hand, some centrist contenders are courting the leftist candidates in local races for mayoralty, although the leftist ignore them arrogantly. For example, the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, rejected immediately De Sarnez's proposals of a center-left union.

Thus, the first victim of the mayoral election is obviously MoDem. For the centrists get polls rating at so weak a level at 3 percent that nobody believes the centrists could surge again toward victory in the presidential elections in 2012. This means the complete defeat of Bayrou's ideology and policy of strict or tough centrist line against the two-headed eagle in the right-left parliament, and toward a new device in the French political theater. In fact, the old and traditional partition of the assembly remains the model that has greatly lowered and, unfortunately, has removed the new centrist party or the MoDem.

Besides, in the great cities of France, the ballot is turning again into some harsh and cynical battle between the right wing and the left wing. Marseille, Lyon and Strasbourg are the theater of a battle wherein the MoDem plays only the character of a flunky or a valet serving the great and lofty princes of national policy. This play evokes greatly the strategy of the far right party, the National Front at a time when Jean-Marie Le Pen was an active and turbulent actor in the French politics drama.

The second great news of the ballot is the complete defeat of the far right front. Moreover, this means a great victory for Nicolas Sarkozy, who finally has been able to reduce this extremist party, when no one could reduce it before Sarkozy's strategy. Probably, one should acknowledge that nobody wanted really to reduce the National Front, so useful when it diffused fear and played dirty tricks in the political theater. Finally, the defeat of the National Front is the evidence of the great return of the frank and neat opposition between the two traditional camps, the right wing and the left wing.

This sounds like the comeback of the traditional apparatus in French democracy widely announced by the mayoral elections and their local races. The two major camps within the national assembly may be clearly rebuilt again and maybe for the decades to come. Actually, one can see that leftists get some difficulties when they want to elect their chief or their main contender, among the so-called "elephants," so jealous and powerful. On the contrary, the rightist have already their young and too powerful chief, who looks like a pop star of politics and the very French lover of the glamorous Carla Bruni. Perhaps this is the reason why the rightist party governs France today, before and after the mayoral elections.

On Sunday evening, both rightists and leftists will run in the race for the next presidential elections in 2012. Finally, the National Front is out and the MoDem appears now as some marginal political force without any possibility of winning the presidency in 2012.