By Elizabeth O’Brien
PARIS, France, June 18, 2007 (LifeSiteNew.com) – Recently elected French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, won the legislative elections by a wide majority this Sunday.
Polls predicted that Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) would win 470 seats out of 577 in the National Assembly, the Globe and Mail reports. The final results were not quite as high, but the party still finished with a 345-seat majority. They lost 14 seats from the 359 total in the presidential election, whereas the Socialists and their allies boosted their number from 149 to 207.
Sarkozy also suffered a blow after Alain Juppé, his second in command, lost his Bordeaux region to a socialist candidate and then announced his official resignation. The President, therefore, is faced with the administrative challenge of assigning someone to replace his official. Nevertheless, the new government has been a record-breaking success, being the first government in 30 years to receive a majority vote twice in a row.
One month after replacing Jacques Chirac as President, Sarkozy is planning a flurry of reforms within the French government. Some of his new tax plans may have caused the decline in support during this Sunday’s election, yet according to the New York Dispatch, he will be “approving reforms on labour, employment, consumer spending, law and universities, immigration and reducing the disruptiveness of strikes.”
Prime Minister Francois Fillon states in the Dispatch that the President is planning immediately and resolutely to “modernize” France. “We don’t want to wait any longer to launch the renovation that the French are calling for,” said Fillon, “We will reform, we will renovate, we will experiment with new ideas…We will get rid of the defeatism that is suffocating the republic.”
These plans for “modernization”, however, are evidently perceived as being much healthier than the promises made by his socialist opponent, Ségolène Royal, just one month prior in the national elections. During an intense, neck-to-neck campaign in May, she tried to boost her rank in the polls by promising to legalize euthanasia, homosexual “marriage” and homosexual adoption. Ms. Royal is also a vehement supporter of abortion.
This Sunday Ms. Royal split from her co-leader of the Socialist party, Francois Hollande. The couple-who have been compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton-formed a union that lasted for 30 years and had four children between them. Ms. Royal now plans to run for undivided leadership of the party.
Although Sarkozy is not pro-life, he opposes Ms. Royal on euthanasia and supports the traditional definition of marriage. Committed to protecting the traditional family, Sarkozy recently stated, “Our model must remain that of a heterosexual family: children need a father and a mother.” (see https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/feb/07022001.html)
Prior to his election, Sarkozy also defended the importance of a positive and harmonious relation between Church and State in an interview entitled La République, les religions, l’espérance [The Republic, the Religions, and Hope]. In the same work, he called for public charitable funding for the Catholic Church in France.
Certain liberal, leftist voices are noisily rejoicing over Sarkozy’s loss of seats in the second election. Nevertheless, when the UMP won power in parliament, first in May and then once again this week, countless pro-life advocates were cautiously relieved. They consider Sarkozy’s dual majority victories over Royal an encouragement for the pro-life movement and sign of hope for a revival of moral consciousness within France.
See previous coverage:
France Presidential Hopeful Royal Promises to Legalize Euthanasia:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/feb/07022001.html
Major Signs of Religious Revival Seen in France and Quebec:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06052606.html
Nicolas Sarkozy Rethinks Secular Legacy of France
https://www.chiesa.espressonline.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=55661&am…
France’s Choice for President: Gay “Marriage” or Re-Marriage of Church and State:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jun/06061906.html