It may have been a local election, but the result of Sunday's vote for a French departmental seat in Brignoles is a cause for considerable alarm among the country's Muslim community. The racist Front National candidate romped home to an easy victory, ousting the center right candidate of former president Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP. Of itself, this could be seen as a flash in the pan, the sort of wayward result in favor of marginal parties that is often a feature of by-elections. Yet the FN is not a marginal party and, what is more concerning, when it seemed that the vote was going to the extremists, the socialist party of President Francois Hollande urged all its supporters and anyone else on the political left to vote for the UMP candidate to ensure the FN did not win the seat. It didn't work. The FN candidate took 54 percent of the vote, leaving his rival trailing with 46 percent. This does not seem to be a flash in the political pan. An opinion poll last week showed that in next May's European and municipal elections, the FN and smaller rightwing parties are currently ahead of both the UMP and the socialists. There is a very real possibility that there will be a large bloc of French extremists elected to the European parliament. The FN's chauvinistic policies have no time for the EU vision, any more than they accept the multi-cultural policies that have made the continent a relatively tolerant home for immigrants, not least Muslims. Able to grandstand on the floor of the EU parliament, doubtless disrupting proceedings whenever they think they can gain advantageous publicity, the prospects of significant FN representation within the European body will be sending shivers down the spines of most other parliamentarians. Yet it is not these shenanigans that should be worrying people. If FN candidates do as well as presently expected in French local elections, then they will be gaining access to small levers of power that could have a far greater impact on the lives of immigrant communities. The proposition is depressingly clear. Local politicians who are elected on platforms of bigotry and hatred will be expected to put in place as much of their vile programs as they dare. Indeed it can be expected that some FN local councillors will produce discriminatory proposals so outrageous that they will be challenged in the courts. This will attract yet more publicity, which, win or lose, will be exploited by the FN in the classic manner of its fascist forebears. Manuel Valls, Hollande's interior minister and a nationally popular figure, has warned that the menace of the FN is now very real. Unfortunately, French voters assailed by economic slowdown, falling incomes and reductions to their generous pensions and welfare entitlements, blame the socialist administration for their troubles. They could just as easily have blamed Sarkozy whose failure to implement the promises of financial reform on which he was elected handed President Hollande a poisoned political chalice. From the voters' point of view, life is tough. The FN lies they are told about immigrants sponging on the state, being responsible for crime waves and posing dangers to public health and order, resonate, most particularly in their own local areas. Mainstream French politicians have less than eight months in which to head off the electoral disaster of nationwide local election wins for the FN.
