Une Bonne Claque!

The final round of the 2007 French Elections are over. Today was the 2nd Tour of the legislatives and the UMP Party was crowing that they had an unassailable majority sewed up. Even this morning, the Reuters press service was predicting a tidal wave for the Party of Nicolas Sarkozy.
At lunch we were surprised to see that the very low turn out numbers of last weeks First Tour seemed to be virtually the same.
Last week it seemed a lot of Socialists stayed home, discouraged by the outcome of the Presidential election.
Tonight it seems that the opposite occurred. The UMP voters, perhaps over confident, stayed away from the polls. The dust is settling and it looks like the Socialists have picked up at least 20 seats over the last UMP dominated legislature. This is very good news as the UMP does not have the solid numbers they thought they would have to pass automatically a lot of the major contraversial legislation they had planned.
The Communists picked up seats, Bayrou's new Modem Party has only 4 seats and the extreme right, The Front National has nothing! Marine LePen lost big in her area to a Socialist!
In their first weeks of power, the UMP overplayed their hand. They proposed legislation that would raise the minimum wage a paltry amount that would not even buy a loaf of bread. They also immediately let it be known that they were going to raise the TVA...the added value tax on goods and services, citing the very unpopular high TVA in Germany and Denmark. This immediately negated Sarkozy's mantra of "Work More, Earn More" in the minds of the electorate.
The UMP lost some important seats. Juppe, the mayor of Bordeaux and Chiracs one time Prime Minister had recently been rehabilitated after his corruption conviction.
He had been named Minister of the Environment, but now if Sarkozy is to be believed, Juppe is out of the government!
Last week on a French News broadcast, Segolene Royal laid into the announcer for the way he reported the election news. He mentioned all the races in which Socialist candidates were in trouble and mentioned the UMP candidates by name and never mentiioned the names of the Socialists. The UMP supporters jumped on her for her display of temper, but every one of the candidates she mentioned and then personally campaigned for, won solid victories tonight!
One item of fall out from the campaign is the relationship of Segolene Royal and her companion, the Secretary of the Socialist Party, Francois Holland. It was leaked that she was leaving him after 17 years. After the election, it became known that he had an affair and she was furious. I think that this leaves her open to seize the leadership of the Party from him. The Socialist Party has a lot of young new blood and it wasn't in much evidence in the Presidential Campaign. In fact, there was a lot of jealousy and infighting between the aging party stalwarts. These guys lost the election by trying to hold on to their positions. Eric Besson, became a traitor, wrote a book to destroy the Party and went over to the UMP. He is now a minister in Sarkozy's government. My theory is that Besson was planning to do this for a long time and was the UMP's Trojan Horse.
Tonight is the official beginning of the end of the age of Sarkozy. The ministers are already at each other throats. The people are beginning to see how they have been duped. This should get interesting as we already have Celia Sarkozy mutating into the Empress Eugenie before our very eyes!