French weekly magazines review 22 March 2015

National Front's prospects in Sunday’s French regional elections fuel passionate reactions from weekly commentators.

Friday’s spectacular eclipse is still very much in Le Canard Enchaîné’s mind and it jokes about another waiting to happen in the ballot box this 22nd of March in this country where everyone seems to be on the nerves.

The satirical weekly mocks Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Nicolas Sarkozy, leader of the main opposition waging a senseless battle to see who hasn’t lost his mettle instead of debating their parties’ political manifestos.

Valls, it argues, does have genuine reasons to be nervous, as his Socialist party which holds 60 out of France’s 100 division faces defeat in some 500 districts.

With projections by the polls that up to 58 percent of voters will abstain for lack of interest, Marianne denies it is an election for nothing.

“It’s a lie”, screams the left-leaning weekly. The left-leaning magazine publishes a special supplement about how the results are likely to consolidate the “profound transformation of French political life.

According to Marianne, the rout of Nicolas Sarkozy’s party in the 2010 regional elections was the turning point of his Presidency which ended in defeat two years later.

Marianne makes a last-ditch effort to convince disenfranchised voters who may be tempted to cast ballots for the National Front.

It is a zoom on life in cities won by the party in last year’s municipal elections.

Its verdict is that while “Frontist” mayors managed to avoid the mistakes of the past their managerial style is authoritarian some are notorious for pressuring and excluding those who don’t agree with them.

Le Point consecrates its editorial on a very strange street name change in Bezier which is likely to swell the National Front vote in the big southern French city.

It now ruled by National Front companion Robert Menard. The former head and co-founder of Reporters without Borders opted to rebaptize an avenue named after the Evian Accords of March 18, 1962 which ended the 8-year Algerian war, paving the way for the country’s independence.

The street now bears the name of French Resistance hero Hélie de Saint Marc, a brave soldier deported by the Germans to Buchenwald in 1941at the age of 19. De Saint Marc was one of over 230,000 Western allied prisoners of war incarcerated at the large Nazi concentration camp where an estimated 56,000 POWs died from starvation and disease.

Le Point says De Saint Marc was suffering from amnesia and on the brink of death when he was freed by the Americans in 1945.

For the right-wing weekly, the frenzy with which the Socialists parrots denounced the re-naming of the street can only boost the political fortunes of the National Front on the eve of this election.

Left-leaning l’Obs investigates the National Front party’s controversial conduct at the European parliament where it sits as France’s most important group after last year’s European elections.

According to the weekly, its 23 MEPs went to Strasbourg vowing to destroy Europe. Nine months later, what they have done instead, is profit from the means placed at their disposal to the point where they are now suspected of having put in place a system to embezzle public money to fund their party’s activities.

L’Express profiles the new brave face of the National Front party – Marion Maréchal-Le Pen the 25 year old grand daughter of National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen who stunned political experts by getting elected one of her party’s first two MPs.

And L’Obs takes up an intriguing story breaking from Nigeria. It is about the government’s recruitment of hundreds of mercenaries to fight against Boko Haram Jihadis making gains in the north of the country.

The journal says the vast majority of the soldiers of fortune are ex-South African soldiers, with proven experience in piloting combat helicopters, fighter jets and the handling of heavy weapons.

There are also Europeans in the ranks, according to the left-leaning magazine, which cites reliable sources, despite Nigeria’s denial.