France govt suffers midterm bruising
French voters today delivered a stinging defeat to President Jacques Chirac’s government and its programme of painful economic reforms in regional elections that turned into a national vote of censure, exit polls showed.
The stunning rebuke, with victories by the opposition left in many regions, will increase pressure on Chirac to reshuffle his conservative government, and perhaps even ditch his prime minister, the unpopular Jean-Pierre Raffarin.
