{"id":5971,"date":"2013-06-24T10:38:43","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T10:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5971"},"modified":"2013-06-24T10:45:48","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T10:45:48","slug":"frances-national-front-scores-spectacular-46-in-villeneuve-sur-lot-by-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5971","title":{"rendered":"France’s National Front scores ‘spectacular’ 46% in Villeneuve-sur-Lot by-election"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Etienne<\/a>
Etienne Bousquet-Cassagne of the Front National<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A 23-year old candidate from France’s right-wing Front National, \u00c9tienne Bousquet-Cassagne, has lost against the mainstream UMP candidate during a by-election in south western France, but scored an overall 46% of the votes, sending shivers through the Socialist government.<\/p>\n

Jean-Louis Costes of the UMP yesterday obtained 53,76% of the votes and so prevented Mrs. Marine Le Pen’s Front National from sending a third MP to the French Assembl\u00e9e. Adding to Socialist woes and causing the governing party to be eliminated during the first round of the contest, was a financial scandal surrounding its candidate and a former junior minister, J\u00e9r\u00f4me Cahuzac. Accused of tax fraud, Mr. Cahuzac admitted to maintaining a secret bank account abroad for 20 years.<\/p>\n

During the first round, the young National Front candidate obtained 26,04% of the votes against Jean-Louis Costes’s 28,71%, ahead of the Socialist Bernard Barral’s 23,69%.\u00a0 On the eve of the second round of voting, the secretary general of the Socialist Party and long-time anti-racist activist, Harlem D\u00e9sir, called on all voters to “block the Front National candidate”. Both the French President, Fran\u00e7ois Hollande\u00a0 and Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault repeated D\u00e9sir’s message to voters.<\/p>\n

Bousquet-Cassagne stated that the results of the second round showed “an electoral defeat but an ideological victory”. The leader of the Front National, Mrs. Marine Le Pen, said last night that the “primary lesson” to be drawn from this by-election was that the “so-called republican front against us was dead”. She noted the spectacular progress made by her party during the two rounds and maintained that “it shows that the combined left-liberal parties are no longer able to mobilise their electorate to prevent the Front National from gaining votes”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A 23-year old candidate from France’s right-wing Front National, \u00c9tienne Bousquet-Cassagne, has lost against the mainstream UMP candidate during a by-election in south western France, but scored an overall 46% of the votes, sending shivers through the Socialist government. Jean-Louis Costes of the UMP yesterday obtained 53,76% of the votes and so prevented Mrs. Marine … Continue reading “France’s National Front scores ‘spectacular’ 46% in Villeneuve-sur-Lot by-election”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[3172,3173,534,3418,3417,3174,2821,963,3416],"class_list":["post-5971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-by-election","tag-etienne-bousquet-cassagne","tag-france","tag-hollande","tag-jean-louis-costes","tag-jerome-cahuzac","tag-marine-le-pen","tag-politics","tag-villeneuve-sur-lot"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/etienne-bousquet-cassagne.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5971"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5973,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5971\/revisions\/5973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}