“I would like to extend my warmest congratulations to Gaston Franco,” hurriedly declared Eric Ciotti, Deputy and President of the General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes. Thanks to the UMP’s results in the South-East region, the mayor of Saint-Martin-Vรฉsubie will sit in the European Parliament. This marks the first elected official from the Alpes-Maritimes in a quarter century to become a Member of the European Parliament. He will join the 71 new MEPs, including the 12 elected from the South-East.
The mobilization in favor of the majority is unsurprising in the region. With 33.5% of the votes in Nice and 35.1% in the department, Christian Estrosi is “pleased to have obtained in Nice the highest score for the UMP among the major cities of France.”
This joy is shared by the National Front, which, as usual, performed very well in the South-East. “We are pleased to see that in the Alpes Maritimes, the FN remains the third political force ahead of the PS with a respectable score of 11.20% and even 12.16% in the city of Nice. The National Front is still alive and very present in our department,” enthused Max Baeza, spokesperson for FN 06.
“The score of the PS constitutes a failure”
On the left, it’s not a time for congratulations. Xavier Garcia, spokesperson for the PS, reacted after the disappointing score of Vincent Peillon (10.72%): “The score of the left as a whole (45% against 40% for the total right-extreme right) is a reason for hope, but that of the Socialist Party constitutes a failure, we should not try to hide it. Unfortunately, we cannot be surprised. The backlash from the Reims Congress had to be paid at some point, and it arrived last night. The voters’ voices went to the parties that have been able to show unity and boldness, particularly the Europe Ecology lists. These are the qualities that we must strive to recover. The PS has always succeeded when it has been united and bold. We must no longer be afraid to confront a number of realities and to have new ideas. We do this daily in the local communities we manage successfully. Why could we not do it at the national level?”
However, a small smile for the Left Front. With 4.85%, Robert Injey, Departmental Secretary of the PCF is happy with this score: “With only a few months of existence and despite discriminatory media treatment, the Left Front achieves a promising and encouraging result. Encouraging for all those who do not resign themselves to suffer the liberal logics that we are being imposed. The result of the Left Front is the fruit of the commitment of communist militants, the PG, the Left Unity, but also thousands of citizens, trade unionists, associations, and intellectuals,” concluded the representative of the French Communist Party.
But these scores remain insignificant. The abstention rate at the European level during these elections (56.9%) once again showed the citizens’ disinterest in the European institutions. Recall that in 2004, the abstention rate was 54.6%.
