French
Socialist MP predicts Le Pen presidency
Ten
years after French riots, Socialist MP says Le Pen could win in 2017.
By NICHOLAS VINOCUR
10/26/15, 8:28 PM CET
Could French
far-right leader Marine Le Pen win the 2017 presidential race?
Malek Boutih, a
French MP from President François Hollande’s ruling Socialist
Party, certainly thinks so.
He said as much
during an interview with BFMTV over the weekend, prompting angry
reactions from several colleagues. His comments were ill-timed for
the Socialists, coming just as the government was unveiling a package
of measures aimed at improving life in the banlieues, or suburbs, 10
years after a wave of riots across France.
“I don’t dare to
say it but I think that 2017 [the presidential election] is a bit of
a done deal,” Boutih, who is in charge of social affairs for the
Socialists, told BFMTV Sunday.
“My fear is not
that the Left will lose, it’s that the Republic will lose in 2017.
In the current state of things, I don’t see how Marine Le Pen
cannot win the presidential [election].”
In public,
Socialists tend to argue that if Hollande chooses to run for
reelection in 2017, he has a chance of winning. Despite the
president’s popularity being at a record low level, Socialists
argue he could still win more votes than either Sarkozy or Le Pen,
both highly divisive figures.
In private, the
message is different. Some Socialists say that National Front leader
Le Pen is “useful” to Hollande, because the more popular she
gets, the more voters she will steal from the center-right. The risk
of her actually winning a final runoff with an absolute majority,
they argue, remains very slim.
Opinion polls
support that analysis. On Sunday, a poll in the JDD weekly newspaper
found that nearly two-thirds of respondents actively rejected a Le
Pen candidacy, with just 16 percent having made up their mind to back
her.
Scare tactics?
Boutih’s comments
may have be intended to frighten Socialist supporters into voting in
regional elections in December. Hollande’s party is heading for
serious losses, with Le Pen and her niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen,
both likely to win regional council presidencies from the Socialists.
That hasn’t
stopped some Socialists from making clear their displeasure at
Boutih.
“I disapprove of
the approach that plays too heavily on fear of the FN, which is
dangerous and will definitely have a boomerang effect,” said Gaetan
Gorce, a Socialist senator.
Furthermore, the
timing of Boutih’s statement — the 10-year anniversary of urban
riots that rocked France in 2005 and forced then-president Jacques
Chirac to call a state of emergency — is especially bad for the
government.
Boutih, who wrote a
controversial report last summer on the spread of radical Islam in
housing projects, argued that in spite of investments worth nearly
€100 billion to renovate dilapidated housing projects across the
country, conditions had actually worsened in the banlieues over the
past decade. Now, he argued, the housing projects were a breeding
ground for terrorism.
“We have been on a
slide for several years which leads us toward something irreparable
because now, unfortunately, these neighborhoods produce terrorists,”
said Boutih. “Ten years later, these are no longer rioters, they
are terrorists.”
His message goes
against against efforts by Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls
to reassert the government’s voice in the banlieues, where the
National Front has started to hunt for votes.
Valls on Monday
announced a series of measures aimed at improving security in the
banlieues, including vest-mounted cameras for police, better
allocation of social housing, and a campaign against discrimination
in hiring.
It may be too
little, too late. Many Muslim officials in the neighborhoods complain
that the Socialist Party failed to heed their interests following
Hollande’s election in 2012, choosing instead to promote socially
liberal policies such as gay marriage. When Hollande visited La
Courneuve last week, a tough neighborhood close to Paris with a large
migrant population, he was booed by a crowd of locals.
On a visit to a
business incubator, Hollande said that there was “no neighborhood
lost to the Republic.”
Boutih disagreed.
“That’s false. The Republic is in conflict with some
neighborhoods,” he said.
Authors:
Nicholas Vinocur
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