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France: A New Paradigm Fast!

PARIS, Jan. 24, 2017 (Nouvelle Solidarité)—Either Jacques Cheminade of France's Solidarité et Progrès party will be able to speak loudly during the upcoming Presidential elections to bring France into line with the New Silk Road and BRICS paradigm, or the country will devolve into a period of social strife and chaos.

The first round of the "left-wing primaries" organized by the Socialist Party (PS) on Jan. 22nd, resulted in the victory of the candidate the furthest to the left, Benoit Hamon, who defends fully green policy, a "EU750 universal revenue for all," and legalization of marijuana. He won 36% against 31% for former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who was running on a very right-wing social democratic platform. Hamon is now the favorite for winning the second round this weekend.

This is only a limited picture of the so-called "left," however, since the two main "left" candidates, Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Parti de Gauche, equivalent to Germany’s Die Linke), longtime leader of the SP, and Emmanuel Macron, who just resigned as Hollande’s economics minister, are running their own campaigns outside the Socialist Party and are already polling (13% for the first and 16% for the second).

What is likely is that the party will be split in two, with the right-wing liberal social democratic wing joining Macron’s candidacy, and the left greenie faction of Hamon joining Mélenchon.

At this point however, it is the French right wing which has best chance to win the Presidential election: Marine Le Pen of the Front National came back into the lead with 25%-26% of the vote, and François Fillon of Les Républicains polling around 23-25%.

What this means, however, is that because of the radicalization in the left, and the very radical right-wing policies of the two contenders on the right, we could be in for a future of conflict and social strife in the streets. If Marine Le Pen is elected and starts going after immigrants, as she has promised she would; if François Fillon were to become President and starts eliminating the 500,000 jobs in the public sector which he has promised to do, cutting taxes for the private sector companies and liberalizing the labor market, it is sure that there will be riots in the streets, just as during the adoption of the El Khomri law deregulating the labor code in the summer 2016.

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