The ex-president failed to balance different centers of power
By Alexei Vlasov, exclusively to VK
France has elected its new president, Francois Hollande. Nicolas Sarkozy failed to get re-elected for a second term. This outcome was predictable, and Sarkozy could have seen an even worse result, if the socialists hadn't made a number of mistakes in their campaigning. One of the important factors that contributed to the victory of Hollande was the decision by the leader of French nationalists Marine le Pen to urge her supporters not to vote for either of the second round participants – and these voters were the only hope for Sarkozy.
The reasons for this defeat are obvious: the political course of Sarkozy’s government didn’t answer the anticipations of the majority of the French people. The situation with the Armenian Genocide denial criminalization bill showed that Sarkozy couldn’t balance between different centers of power.
So one of the main intrigues of today’s France is the foreign political course of the new government. Will Paris be active in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement? The major part of the experts expects Hollande’s priorities will be with the issues of home economy and not with any foreign political issues as French economy risks failing in the face of the new European crisis. Hollande’s desire to make French economy more ‘socialist’ is understandable but seems to be unrealizable. So the timeliest question of the French foreign politics for now is whether the ‘Paris-Berlin’ alliance would hold, while the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh is not on list of the new government’s urgent concerns.
As for the parliamentary elections in Armenia, their outcome was also predictable: the ruling Republican party headed by the acting President Serge Sarksyan won despite the aggressive campaigning of its ex-allies and main rivals, the “Prosperous Armenia” party. The disagreements between the two parties are likely to increase in the future.
As for the oppositional Armenian National Congress headed by Levon Ter-Petrosyan, I believe that the opposition was ‘let’ into the parliament, thus eliminating any grounds for mass protest actions. Will the new parliament be efficient – we’ll wait and see.
According to the experts, the Armenian elections are also unlikely to influence the progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. The fragile balance will most likely be preserved. I believe that Baku are expecting certain intensification of Russia’s mediatory efforts now that Vladimir Putin is president again. However, the settlement process itself seems to be remaining in the dead-end it hit earlier.
