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Le Pen’s far-right fails to win any areas in French regional elections

Marine Le Pen's far-right has failed to win any region in France's local elections.

Le Pen's far-right fails to win any areas in French regional elections
Rassemblement National leader Marine Le Pen. Photo: Denis Charlet/AFP

In a second round of voting in the regional elections that was again marked by record voter abstention, Le Pen failed to win a single region while the centrist ruling party of President Emmanuel Macron suffered another poll drubbing.

Macron’s ruling party could not break into double figures nationwide while Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) could not realise its main ambition of winning the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region that includes Marseille and Nice, according to official results which confirmed the early exit polls.

Pre-election polling showed Le Pen poised to take control in several areas, but a first round of voting on June 20th – also marked with a record low turnout of 33 percent – saw her party finish ahead in just one region – PACA.

Several other candidates in the area withdrew ahead of the second round of voting on Sunday – the so-called Front républicain – leaving a two-horse race between the far-right candidate and a candidate of the centre right.

Macron’s party – fighting its first regional elections since its formation in 2016 – also did poorly in the first round and didn’t make it through to the second round in many areas, leaving the majority of votes to candidates of the centre-left and centre-right parties.

The regional voting had been closely watched as it is the last time the French go to the polls before choosing a new president in 2022.

The below map from Le Parisien shows the results, with pink representing centre-left candidates or alliances and blue showing centre-right successes.

Although analysts have warned of extrapolating too much from these local results to next year’s presidential elections, there was cross-party concern over the turnout for last week’s polls, shunned by 66.72 percent of voters, a record in modern France.

The second round showed a similarly low turnout.

“I don’t really know what the point is,” said Helene Debotte, 31, who said she would not vote in these polls but would in the presidential elections.

“There, it’s clear what is at stake.”

Polls have shown most French do not know who leads their regions and what the entities do.

One of the most closely watched races on Sunday was whether the RN candidate Thierry Mariani could defeat his right-wing rival Renaud Muselier in the PACA region.

But Muselier defeated Mariani by a margin of some 10 percent.

Critics have accused Mariani of being an admirer of authoritarians such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Prime Minister Jean Castex warned last week that a Mariani victory would be “very serious” for the country.

The RN also came up short in the Île-de-France region that includes Paris. Its 25-year-old rising star Jordan Bardella failed to trouble right-wing incumbent Valerie Pecresse who held off a coalition of the left and greens.

Right-wing heavyweight Xavier Bertrand meanwhile, held onto the northeastern Hauts-de-France, cementing his credibility as a 2022 presidential challenger from the traditional right.

The results made unpalatable reading for Macron and his LREM, confirming the party’s failure to put down local and regional roots despite controlling the presidency and lower house of parliament.

The LREM’s chief Stanislas Guerini admitted the elections marked a “disappointment for the presidential majority”.

Despite sending several ministers to campaign and Macron himself embarking on a nationwide tour – that saw him at one point slapped by member of the public – in some regions the party failed to muster the required 10 percent to make round two.

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POLITICS

French parliament backs bill against hair discrimination affecting black women

France's lower house of parliament on Thursday approved a bill forbidding workplace discrimination based on hair texture, which the draft law's backers say targets mostly black women wearing their hair naturally.

French parliament backs bill against hair discrimination affecting black women

Olivier Serva, an independent National Assembly deputy for the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe and the bill’s sponsor, said it would penalise any workplace discrimination based on “hair style, colour, length or texture”.

Similar laws exist in around 20 US states which have identified hair discrimination as an expression of racism.

In Britain, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has issued guidelines against hair discrimination in schools.

Serva, who is black, said women “of African descent” were often encouraged before job interviews to change their style of hair. Backers also say that men who wear their hair in styles like dreadlocks are also affected.

The bill was approved in the lower house National Assembly with 44 votes in favour and two against. It will now head to the upper Senate where the right has the majority and the vote’s outcome is much less certain.

‘Target of discrimination’

Serva, who also included discrimination suffered by blondes and redheads in his proposal, points to an American study stating that a quarter of black women polled said they had been ruled out for jobs because of how they wore their hair at the job interview.

Such statistics are hard to come by in France, which bans the compilation of personal data that mention a person’s race or ethnic background on the basis of the French Republic’s “universalist” principles.

The draft law does not, in fact, contain the term “racism”, noted Daphne Bedinade, a social anthropologist, saying the omission was problematic.

“To make this only about hair discrimination is to mask the problems of people whose hair makes them a target of discrimination, mostly black women,” she told Le Monde daily.

A black Air France air crew member in 2022 won a 10-year legal battle for the right to work with braided hair on flights after a decision by France’s highest appeals court.

While statistics are difficult to come by, high-profile people have faced online harassment because of their hairstyle.

In the political sphere they include former government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye, and Audrey Pulvar, a deputy mayor of Paris, whose afro look has attracted much negative comment online.

The bill’s critics say it is unnecessary, as discrimination based on looks is already banned by law.

“There is no legal void here,” said Eric Rocheblave, a lawyer specialising in labour law.

Calling any future law “symbolic”, Rocheblave said it would not be of much practical help when it came to proving discrimination in court.

Kenza Bel Kenadil, an influencer and self-proclaimed “activist against hair discrimination”, said a law would still send an important message.

“It would tell everybody that the law protects you in every way and lets you style your hair any way you want,” she said.

The influencer, who has 256,000 followers on Instagram, said she herself had been “forced” to tie her hair in a bun when she was working as a receptionist.

Her employers were “very clear”, she said. “It was, either you go home and fix your hair or you don’t come here to work”.

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