Anne Hidalgo (center), the current Paris deputy mayor and Socialist Party candidate in the mayoral election, celebrates with outgoing Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe (center back) on the podium in front of the Paris town hall after her victory in the second round in the French mayoral elections in Paris, on Sunday. Benoit Tessier / Reuters

Far-right makes gains as Paris elects its first-ever woman mayor

A victory to savor for Hidalgo As she bid to become the first female mayor of Paris, Spanish-born Socialist Anne Hidalgo had to endure taunts from her opponents about her modest origins and lack of Parisian roots.

France's ruling Socialist Party suffered humiliating losses on Sunday in local polls marked by breakthrough successes for the far-right National Front and the historic election of the first female mayor of Paris.

On a day dubbed "Black Sunday" by one Socialist lawmaker, the National Front, or FN, won control of at least eight towns and was on track to claim 1,200 municipal council seats nationwide, its best ever showing at the grassroots level of French politics.

It was also a night to savor for France's main opposition party, the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP.

The party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy performed strongly across the country, seizing control of a string of towns and cities, including some once considered bastions of the left.

In a rare consolation for President Francois Hollande's party, the Socialists held on to control of Paris, where Anne Hidalgo, 54, will become the first female mayor of city after a victory that was far more comfortable than anyone had expected.

But Limoges, a town that had been run by the left for 102 years, fell to the UMP, as did Toulouse, the Champagne capital Reims and Saint Etienne, as well as dozens of other smaller urban centers.

"It has been a black Sunday," said Socialist deputy Jean-Christophe Cambadelis.

Recording its best score in 19 years, FN mayoral candidates won in at least eight cities compared with its three mayors elected in 2008.

FN leader Marine Le Pen said the party's unprecedented performance was a message to other leading political parties that it is challenging for power.

"Clearly, we are moving to a new phase, the duopoly of French politics between the UMP and the Socialist Party has been broken and we must reckon with a third force," she said.

The FN suffered setbacks in a number of its target areas.

The historic festival city of Avignon, where the FN had headed the first-round vote, remained under left-wing control, and Le Pen's party also failed to win the northeastern town of Forbach and the southern city of Perpignan.

An OpinionWay poll for the newspaper Le Figaro suggested the UMP and its allies had taken 45 percent of the votes cast nationwide in municipalities of more than 1,000 residents, while the Socialists and other left-wing parties took 43 percent and the FN, which was only standing in a small number of areas, registered 7 percent.

The FN's success at these elections has been widely interpreted as reflecting exasperation among voters with the Hollande government.

The Socialists' failure to get a stagnant economy moving and reverse the upward march of unemployment is seen as having aggravated anger over other issues, such as crime and immigration, and increased disillusionment with mainstream politicians of all stripes.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is widely expected to be made the principal scapegoat for the government's failures when Hollande takes stock on Monday morning. "The message the voters have sent is very clear and must be clearly heard," Ayrault said.

zhangchunyan@chinadaily.com.cn

AFP-Xinhua