Two major lessons emerge from the first round of the regional elections
- The magnitude of abstention by millions of youth, workers, and the unemployed, who mostly wished to register their rejection of the political parties that have alternated in power and that are responsible for aggravating their conditions of life.
- The vigor of the rejection of the Right and Sarkozy in government — accomplices of big investors and the richest classes, who have made the majority of the population pay the cost of the crisis and who are destroying public services and social gains — fueled the upsurge of the Socialist Party (PS) and Europe Écologie.
This rejection of the Right allowed the PS and its allies, which have been governing 20 regions since 2004, not to be punished for their record.
Moreover, the campaign for the just completed first round was vitiated by the wave of disturbing racism from which the National Front (FN) greatly benefitted.
We thank the women and men who voted for the New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) lists or the unity lists in which the NPA participated. Overall, our electoral results are disappointing even though the results of some of our lists seem to be promising. We will analyze these facts and their causes in greater detail in coming days.
For next Sunday, we call on the voters to confirm and amplify the results of the first round by inflicting the greatest possible defeat on the lists supported by Sarkozy and the UMP. Punishing the Right is an absolute necessity, even though we think that the left-wing majorities to come will be no better defense against the politics of Sarkozy than they have been for the last several years. However, punishing the Right in the elections will not be enough to block its politics.
Just like what’s happening in Greece, under a socialist government, it is likely to get worse in coming weeks. Pay for their crisis? No way! Like the front of youth, workers, the unemployed, and the retired in Greece, we must prepare for the third round, which is social!
The 23rd of March has to become the first stage of convergence of struggles for pensions, wages, and the prohibition of layoffs. And it’s around these demands we wish to build the broadest unity against the Right, the bosses, and the bankers.
Paris, 14 March 2010, 20:15
Executive Committee of the New Anti-Capitalist Party
The original statement “Déclaration du NPA au soir du premier tour des régionales” was published on the NPA Web site on 14 March 2010. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).
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