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French set to punish Hollande in mayoral runoffs

World News

30-03-2014 | 02:58

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French set to punish Hollande in mayoral runoffs

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French President Francois Hollande's Socialists braced for losses in hundreds of towns and villages in mayoral elections on Sunday, with far-right National Front candidates seen winning a handful of cities for the first time since 1995.

The runoff round of voting comes at the end of a week that saw French unemployment surge to a new record, making a reverse of first round losses unlikely and a cabinet reshuffle by Hollande possible as soon as Monday.

Some 80 percent of the French want him to dismiss Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, according to a recent Harris Interactive poll, and ambitious and tough-talking Interior Minister Manuel Valls comes top of their favourites for the job.

"I can't see how (Ayrault) could stay, unless we save about thirty towns, something nobody really believes," a Socialist Party source said.

Dissatisfaction with Hollande's rule and a string of legal intrigues involving opposition conservatives are seen hitting turnout and helping the anti-immigrant FN win in the depressed post-industrial north and in southern towns such as Beziers.

Pollsters identify half a dozen FN-run towns emerging after the vote, giving the party a chance to try exercising power two decades after its attempts to run four southern towns it won in 1995 and 1997 revealed its lack of competence.

The FN's made a striking breakthrough last Sunday by winning power outright in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont, a former coal-mining centre with unemployment now around 18 percent.

REUTERS

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