Only weeks earlier, in the second round of the presidential elections in May, Chirac was reelected president of France with 82 percent of the vote and the support of the Socialist Party (SP), French Communist Party, and other centrist and workers’ parties in the country. They claimed a massive turnout was need to "stop fascism" because Jean-Marie Le Pen, candidate of the ultrarightist Nationalist Front, was the other candidate in the runoff.

With the elections over, the Plural Left, the electoral alliance that held a parliamentary majority led by the Socialist Party (SP), has collapsed in disarray and has been dissolved. It had also included the French Communist Party (CP), the Greens, the Left Radicals, and the Republican Pole.

The depth of the crisis facing these parties was registered again when the heads of the French CP, the Greens, and the Republican Pole were all defeated in their local constituencies. Lionel Jospin, former prime minister and head of the SP, came in third in the presidential elections in May, eliminating him from the runoff.

In the parliamentary elections the two parties that call themselves Trotskyist received just over 1 percent each in the first round, down from 11 percent in the presidential elections in May. Neither had a candidate who won enough votes to be eligible for the second round of voting. The vote for the two extreme rightist parties fell by almost 50 percent from the presidential elections. The parties received only 12 percent of the vote in the first round of the parliamentary vote and ended up with no elected deputies in the final round.

After its disastrous showing in the presidential elections in May, SP leaders announced a "left turn" to win back disaffected workers and youth. But the only visible result of this was a campaign promise to raise the minimum wage by 5 percent in July.

Chirac appealed to the middle class and better off sections of the working class by promising to lower income taxes by 5 percent. Since only 50 percent of families earn enough to pay income taxes, most workers were unaffected by this measure. There was no promise by Chirac’s party to lower the highly regressive value-added tax, which particularly affects workers, nor to raise the minimum wage.  
 
Rise in deficit spending
The president also continued his "law and order" campaign, taking steps to put more police and gendarmes on the street in certain working-class neighborhoods and give them the right to use rubber bullets for the first time.

The tax reduction and the large increases in spending for police and the military that Chirac has announced means the French government will run a deficit higher than the limit of 3 percent of the gross domestic product, a ceiling agreed to as part of the drive to launch the euro as a common currency in Europe. This has led to conflicts with the European Central Bank.

Within hours of the election results, Jean-Claude Trichet, currently the governor of the Bank of France and soon to be president of the European Central Bank, called on the new government to "reduce public spending along with the tax cut" in order to meet the EU guidelines. He said that France should "respect the fixed objectives of the European Stability and Growth Pact," which he described as "fundamental for Europe" because it "allows us to have a single currency without the necessity of a federal government and federal budget."

Leading into the second round of the presidential vote, Chirac called on all the conservative parties to dissolve into a single party under presidential control. Candidates on the UMP slate pledged to be part of the same parliamentary caucus and to take part in the founding of a new party in the fall to replace the multiplicity of existing conservative formations. This caucus is to vote in parliament according to the president’s dictates, and those who do not would face expulsion. Government ministers would be subject to recall by this parliamentary caucus.

With the UMP now having an absolute majority in the National Assembly, some of Chirac’s critics are saying that he has created a rubber stamp parliament, and a prime minister and governmental cabinet under his control. Those who only weeks ago hailed him as the last alternative for democracy in France, are now warning Chirac to be cautious in his exercise of power. "The balance of our democracy is at stake," SP leader François Hollande said.

The new UMP government will be able to build on a number of attacks on workers’ rights that have been carried out with bipartisan support from the SP. On June 5 Chirac prolonged for another three months the Re-enforced Vigipirate plan, which was put in place by the Plural Left government after September 11. Vigipirate suspends certain restrictions on police action and allows the army to have joint patrols with police and gendarmes. It allows identity checks and body searches that are normally forbidden.

Nor did the Plural Left oppose other measures to "re-enforce the role of the police" such as the creation of a super-ministry of internal security; the formation of 28 Regional Intervention Groups composed of police, gendarmes, and other repressive forces; or the authorization of the use of "flash ball" rubber bullets.  
 
New struggles by workers
In the midst of the parliamentary balloting, a number of struggles by working people have continued.

On June 8 more than 1,500 people demonstrated in Paris to defend undocumented workers. "For several months the police have been making raids on immigrant worker hostels," said Jean Guillien, one of the march organizers. "We demand giving papers to the 300,000 to 400,000 immigrant workers in France who work but have no rights."

Postal worker unions have called for actions June 20 to defend 100,000 postal workers who work on private contracts.

Even doctors have been demonstrating against the budget restrictions imposed on the public health service. After months of demonstrations and a highly publicized violent attack by CRS riot police, general practitioners won an increase in social security rates paid for doctors’ consultations. Following the general practitioners victory, pediatricians announced the start of a similar movement.  
 
 
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