Storm clouds gathered over Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin on Monday after French voters dealt him a stinging defeat in the first round of regional elections overshadowed by high unemployment and strikes.
Editorials asked whether Raffarin, brought in by President Jacques Chirac as a fresh breeze from the provinces in 2002, could survive in office after seeing his own region among up to a dozen that could shift to the left in next Sunday's run-off.
A stern-faced Raffarin told voters he would "take into account" their message, without hinting what he would do, and key allies rushed on Monday to say his cost-cutting reforms, privatisation's and social services reductions would continue.
Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, a leading figure on the right mentioned as a possible successor, declared the message the voters sent was to speed up those reforms.
"The message reflects the impatience, even the exasperation, of some French at the reforms that they find are going too slow," she told RTL radio. "It's not going fast enough."
The media treated Raffarin, whose popularity has faded over the past year as unemployment reached 9.8 percent and labour unrest spread, as a man on his way out. French presidents often fire prime ministers when the political wind turns.
"Bye-bye Raffarin," the left-wing daily Liberation wrote. The business daily Les Echos said: "There are strong chances that the days of the Raffarin government are numbered." France 2 television saw Raffarin and this government "in the hot seat."
The mainstream left won 40 percent of the vote while the centre-right slumped to 34 percent and the far-right National Front rallied a strong 17 percent protest vote.
Voting in France's 26 regions goes into the run-off round next Sunday with the left - which ran about one-third of them before - aiming to take up to half the regions, pollsters said.
Raffarin also suffered a humiliating personal defeat, seeing the left rack up 47 percent in the Poitou-Charentes region he led for 14 years. Former Socialist Education Minister Segolene Royale looked set to take the region from the right next week.
The vote for anti-immigrant leader Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front was one of its best ever and showed a stubbornly high protest potential in the electorate. It will contest 17 run-offs, draining votes from the mainstream right.
The outcome was a big decline for the ruling parties from the parliamentary election in 2002, when the centre-right won more than 43 percent of votes, the left secured a little over 37 percent and the National Front got just over 11 percent.
Regional votes have only a symbolic national impact but Chirac could remove Raffarin if the second round goes badly.
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