The party, it is who?

Once elections have passed, the story is far from over. Those who won have to face the reality of their new job: they are in charge of the country, hence responsible for anything that happens within its boundaries (although, of course, more likely than not they will be made accountable rather for the bad things). But that is what they wanted, and they finally got it. Those who lost face what could be an even stronger challenge: they have to cope with their defeat. They will try to blame each other for what happened, dangerously stretching the party to a breaking point until, perhaps, they question themselves and whether the electorate indeed shares their own vision of the world.

President of France Nicolas Sarkozy lost the reelection this spring in favor of the socialist candidate Franois Hollande. Voters’ support for Sarkozy fell from 53.06% in 2007 to 48.36% in 2012, according to the runoff results. In June, parliamentary elections were held, which meant another defeat for Sarkozy’s party Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). In the previous contest in 2007, they won the absolute majority with 313 seats out of 577. Five years later they lost 119 of those, to get 198. In contrast, the socialists went from having 186 places in 2007 to 280 now. Though they had fallen 9 short of the absolute majority, the message was clear: the French public thought the UMP was not on the correct track.

Last Sunday, the UMP had primary elections to select its president. The two candidates were François Fillon, Prime Minister under Sarkozy, who maintained a relatively moderate stance in front of the President’s growing populist rhetoric, and Jean-François Copé, incumbent Secretary General of the party, associated with an extreme-right, even xenophobic, position. (This latter perception derives from a comment he made during his campaign, in the sense that “anti-white racism” was growing in France.) In a very close contest, Copé won by 98 votes.

Fillon’s pictures in the French newspaper Le Monde show him devastated. He mentions that his defeat does not mean that he is leaving politics, and that in the next few days he will explain how his political engagement will continue. However, Fillon is well aware, as Copé and practically everyone in France, that to lose the election for the UMP presidency is almost like losing any chance for being nominated as a candidate to the presidency, though the election is still 5 years away. Furthermore, Fillon’s supporters seem to be actually his supporters. As it is assumed it happens in democratic parties, after the result of the election was made public, Copé said he would like Fillon to work along with him as vice-president of the UMP. The official answer is still pending. The sensation among the party members, most importantly Fillon’s supporters, is that the organization has broken into two. In an interview, one of the regional heads of Fillon’s campaign bitterly said that they want to work in a UMP under Fillon, not under Copé, but that if it is Fillon’s wish to join Copé, they will support him. In addition, Fillon’s campaign director said Copé’s offer for his contender to join the party’s vice presidency was “grotesque”.

Evidently, Copé’s first challenge is to keep the party united. His first attempt has failed. However, Fillon’s defeat is still very recent and decisions are yet being made with a warm head. In addition, it could be argued that French politicians react in very white-and-black terms at critical junctures. As well, Copé’s election as president of the UMP may echo the reasons which led to the creation of the party in 2002, according to a blogger who posts in Le Monde: to catch right-leaning voters in order to prevent, one, other conservative parties (particularly the radical, nationalist and populist National Front) from gaining support and, two, constituting an opposition in the National Assembly to then President Jacques Chirac, major sponsor of the project. Reportedly, this “alliance of the rights” worked more or less well. However, the different policies undertaken by Sarkozy to counter the 2008 crisis made support for the UMP too diffuse. Thus, the election as party president of a figure more closely identified with a traditional right can be also interpreted as an attempt to regain all the lost votes. As an electoral strategy it can be the right course of action. But it seems the UMP is still missing a fundamental question: what is the right contributing to now, beyond representing their base constituencies, in the French political system? Notwithstanding the problems of the left and center parties, it sometimes appears that the same question must be made by right political groups in other places around the world.