The French express disenchantment with the government in local elections

"You would have to be deaf and blind to have failed to understand the scalding message addressed to the leadership. A message of terrible disappointment", comments Joëlle Meskens. "If the left is re-conquering numerous urban bastions, it is not merely a mechanical swing of the pendulum. Not only because the French traditionally seek a balancing out of power in intermediary elections, the fact that big symbolic cities such as Toulouse and Strasbourg have swung to the left is proof that doubt has arisen in this conservative France that thought it had found a saviour in Nicolas Sarkozy, for an obvious lack of one in the Socialist Party ... which has won these elections. The losers are a right-wing that has fallen out with a part of its electorate that it has lost. ... President Nicolas Sarkozy would be well-advised to pay heed to this warning."

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