Word: leftist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...slow strategy. In 1995, France's last conservative government provoked crippling month-long strikes with its steamroller approach to reform. The fury unleashed by that effort cost the rightist government of Prime Minister Alain Juppé its parliamentary majority in 1997 elections, won by a previously floundering coalition of leftist parties united under Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin. Aware of France's dimming economic outlook, Chirac and Raffarin are now opting for caution over collision?and have backed down when their measures have generated opposition. The tact is apparently working: approval ratings for Chirac and Raffarin are holding steady...
...good news for Raffarin is that even though France's social and labor terrain is heavily mined, his majority may be able to use its five-year term to put its reforms into place gradually?and ride out any waves of protest. With the leftist opposition in disarray after its electoral trouncing last June, Raffarin's stiffest challenge may come from the European Union: its requirement that budget deficits steadily come down will be tough during an economic slump, especially if Raffarin cuts taxes without shrinking the public sector. That's an economic equation studded with contradiction and conflict?qualities...
After its drubbing in this year's elections, the French left began searching for ways to mount a vigorous opposition to the victorious conservative forces. But leftist parties still seem to find more to argue about among themselves than with their rightist rivals...
...political souls. The inability to resolve that conundrum has bled France's once-mighty Communist Party to near extinction. Disgruntled working-class voters have increasingly sought ideological solace in Trotskyist movements?or defected to the thuggish populism of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front. Other members of the leftist coalition have experienced a similar flight. The Green Party, for instance, found that the pragmatism required to be in government alienated many of its members, who had expected uncompromising policies. As elections neared, both the Communists and the Greens sought to exculpate themselves with voters by accusing their Socialist partners...
Politics was the bottom line, after all. Investors set off Brazil's crisis out of fear that the two leftist candidates leading in presidential election polls would reverse the country's laudable efforts to adopt free-market reforms. A Brazilian default could upset the tenuous U.S. recovery and cost U.S. Republicans in November's congressional elections. That vote also coincides with the start of new negotiations for a giant hemispheric free-trade pact. If Brazil's economy continues to melt down, those talks will implode, causing Bush political embarrassment...