For all women and men who love our country, who were hard hit by Nicolas Sarkozy’s policies over the last five years, which saw France weakened, impoverished and damaged, the results of the first round the presidential election sound like a rallying cry to make every effort to defeat the outgoing president.
As feared, the results of the Front national (18%) could serve as a reservoir of votes to the candidate Sarkozy. The outgoing president, whose score is down from 2007, can be beaten on May 6.
The second round will pit Nicolas Sarkozy for the right (27%) against the socialist candidate, Francois Hollande, (28,6%), who universal suffrage placed at the top. The right must now undergo a clear defeat. This is the new and next necessary step of the citizens' revolution that we started.
Nearly 12% and about 4 million votes are credited to the joint candidate of the Front de gauche, Jean-Luc Melenchon. It represents an unprecedented result. This is the highlight of this election, as was our campaign — a campaign that has been taken up by hundreds of thousands of women, men, and young people across the country.
The fighting spirit, the courageous and committed spirit of the Left has returned. In its wake, the hopes of changing life, of opening up a different future for our country, France, and thereby for Europe are strengthened.
I want to congratulate all voters who made the choice of casting their vote for Jean-Luc Melenchon, and the Left Front programme that he represented.
I want to thank, with all my heart, all the militants of the French Communist Party and of the Left Front, all the women and men, whatever their form of commitment, who gave substance to this hope and made this result possible.
On behalf of the French Communist Party, I'm calling for the broadest and strongest rally possible of all the left, of all our people, to beat Nicolas Sarkozy by voting for the Socialist candidate François Hollande.
The defeat of the outgoing president must be complete, clear and unmistakable and we will devote all our strength to this end.
Everything must be done to prevent the re-election of the UMP and MEDEF candidate, which has, in many ways, never hesitated to adopt the program of the Front national. The right and the far right shall not win. France does not deserve five more years of this nightmare.
Fighting and defeating the xenophobic and racist ideas of Le Pen remain a burning issue. The Left Front is proud of the work it has begun, quite alone in this campaign, to roll back the ideas of the FN. We will intensify this in the upcoming General elections. No member of this party should be elected to the National Assembly.
The PCF, the Left Front, will continue to rally round the choices we promoted in this campaign. Our proposals for conducting a Left and audacious political project are available and are capable of bringing the country out of the crisis by rejecting austerity and winning back the power confiscated by the capital forces.

We will continue to fight to increase the minimum wage and all wages, to obtain the immediate return of full-rate retirement age at 60 years of age for all, the prohibition of sacking to please the stock exchange, a fair fiscal reform, the creation of a public banking and financial centre. We will never give up the demand that any new EU Treaty, renegotiated or not, be submitted for ratification by the French people.
In the coming weeks, the PCF and the Left Front will mobilize the country to give further weight to these proposals, to elect a left majority in the National Assembly, with a maximum of Left Front MPs.

France will need brave MPs, ready to repeal Sarkozy's laws without hesitation, to develop and vote new laws creating real political, social and economic conquests for workers. The Left Front MPS in the National Assembly will be the representatives of the movement of civic mobilisation that arose during this election campaign.
On May 6, the victory of the left is at hand. It will be completed during legislative elections by the confirmation of the Left Front’s position in the renewal of French political life.

This campaign and the result of the Left Front and its common candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, prove that the French people and the European people are not condemned to suffer the law of capitalist markets.
Another way is now open.
I call on the millions of citizens that joined us to continue on this road, to put every effort in the Left Front, in citizens' assemblies, in "the struggle fronts", proposals and actions that we have created. Make it your business to enable this change, which our people desire.
Pierre Laurent ,
National Secretary of the French Communist Party,
President of the National Campaign Council of the Left Front Paris, April 22, 2012