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Monday 14 Dec 2015 - 19:04 Makkah mean time-3-3-1437
(Picture from Getty Images)
Paris, (IINA) - French voters dealt a sharp setback on Sunday to the anti-immigration, far-right National Front in regional elections, depriving the party of victory in any of the country’s 13 regions, New York Times reported citing projections based on exit polls.
A week after the National Front came out on top in the first round of voting, France sent a far different message, with the party losing even in a northern region where its charismatic leader, Marine Le Pen, had been widely expected to win.
The projections also showed the National Front being defeated in another of its strongest areas, the southern city of Nice, where Le Pen’s 26-year-old niece, Marion Maréchal Le Pen, was on the ballot.
If confirmed when the vote count is completed, the results would confound expectations that the party, with its anti-immigrant, nativist message, was on the verge of an electoral breakthrough that could have added momentum and credibility to Ms. Le Pen’s hopes of winning the presidency in 2017.
In the two main regions where the Front was thought to have had a chance of winning, the Socialist Party candidates dropped out, leaving the field clear for the mainstream conservative candidate.
“I salute the voters who responded to the appeal to block the far right”, said Prime Minister Manuel Valls of the governing Socialist party in a speech Sunday night, even as he warned that “the danger of the far right is not over, far from it”.
Early results show that the governing Socialists will win four to five regions, while the mainstream conservative Republicans take the rest, including Paris.
AG/IINA
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