Jon Henley in Paris
Monday March 19, 2001
The Guardian
A giant party erupted outside Paris's town hall last night at the news that a
socialist mayor is to take over for the first time in more than 130 years
after the capital swung to the left in elections yesterday.
An alliance dominated by the Socialist party and the Greens headed by the
unassuming Bertrand Delanok - until last year an unknown senator and local
councillor - was proclaimed the winner of a majority of seats after an
agonisingly tight race.
The official result, due to be confirmed by the interior ministry this
morning, is expected to give the coalition 88 seats on the 163-seat council. A
committee of councillors formally elects the mayor on Friday.
The Paris result came in the second round of local elections across France,
but the news in many other centres was far from bright for the governing
Socialists.
In the capital, however, a delirious crowd of tens of thousands of
champagne-drinking supporters converged on the town hall - for nearly a
quarter of a century the fiefdom of Jacques Chirac, now France's conservative
president.
Mr Delanok promised to be a mayor for all Parisians. He called the election
outcome a "victory for audacity and reason".
In the square at the town hall, the Hotel de Ville, members of the Delanok
coalition - which also includes Communists and leftwing radicals - were
swinging from lamp-posts and waving their house keys as they jokingly demanded
entry: "Give us the keys! Give us the keys!"
The French capital has not been run by a leftwing administration since the
bloody popular uprising of the 1871 Paris Commune, and throughout the 1980s
was so dominated by Mr Chirac's Gaullist RPR party that all 20 of its
arrondissements were under conservative control.
Ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in 2002, the capture of
Paris by the left is bound to deal a blow to the president, who is struggling
to defend himself against an array of corruption scandals dating from his 18
years as the city's mayor.
An incoming Socialist administration is likely to cooperate fully with
magistrates investigating the scandals - inquiries which until now have
dragged along.
Last night Mr Delanok told cheering supporters it was "time for a democratic
party from which no Parisians should feel excluded".
The people of the city had made a choice for "profound change" in electing him
as mayor. Their decision would bring "a change of culture and of democratic
practices".
Mr Delanok will also become the first publicly declared homosexual politician
to hold a post of national importance in France.
On a night when many of France's provincial towns swung to the right, the vote
in the country's second-biggest city, Lyon, looked even closer than in Paris,
with the Socialists forecast to emerge victorious by just two or three seats.
Last Sunday's first round of voting to elect some 36,000 mayors across France
had focused eyes on the conservative Paris, Lyon and Toulouse.
In the capital, a feud between the rightist candidate, Philippe Siguin, and
the outgoing mayor, Jean Tiberi, helped to hand victory to the Socialists.
Last night, Mr Siguin said that he would have won if not for the "iniquitous"
voting system. He said the right got 50.3% of the votes cast, ahead of the
left's 48.5%.
"There is no doubt that under a system of universal suffrage I would today
have been elected mayor of Paris," he told reporters and activists.
But Mr Tiberi, who was re-elected as mayor of his Left Bank stronghold of the
fifth arrondissement, was quick to blame Mr Siguin for the right's defeat.
"I wanted unity, to merge our lists," he said. "Our political leaders, Mr
Siguin and the heads of lists refused... a grave and a historic mistake."
In Toulouse, the Socialists and Greens appeared to have narrowly lost in their
attempt to upset the conservative candidate, Philippe Douste-Blazy.
Other Socialists who seemed to be headed for defeat were the education
minister, Jack Lang, in Blois; the high-profile labour minister, Elisabeth
Guigou, in Avignon; and the European affairs minister, Pierre Moscovici, in
Montbeliard.
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