Will Giscard survive?
Sam White
Paris Only massive Communist abstentions and an equally massive transfer of Chirac votes to Giscard can now prevent a Mitterrand victory in the final round of the French presidential election on 10 May. As neither possibility is likely Mitterrand must be , considered closer to winning than he was even in 1974 when he lost by the wafer-thin margin of less than 20 per cent of the vote. Win or lose however, Mitterrand has already triumphantly settled accounts with the French Communist Party, reducing it to a humiliating 15 per cent of the vote, by far the lowest they have scored in any post-war elections, while his is the highest Socialist vote since the heady days of the Liberation. Mitterrand's is therefore an historic achievement far eclipsing that of de Gaulle who in his heyday cut the Communist vote down to 18 per cent instead of its customary 20 or 21. It opens up new perspectives on the French political scene hitherto blocked by a seemingly irreducible Kremlin-like fortress on the Seine. The immediate consequences, however, are as important as the probable long-term ones. By drastically reducing the Communist vote he has also reduced the credibility of the claim that he would be a prisoner of the Communists if he won. Already before last Sunday's vote he ruled out any negotiations with them between the two rounds; now all he has to do is wait for the Communist vote to drop into his lap. I write before the Politbureau meeting
which will decide on the party's attitude in the second round, but it is already amply clear that it cannot risk further desertions from its ranks by recommending abstention. Already deserted by one and a half million of its voters in the first round, it would face the threat of being disobeyed by the bulk of the rest in the second. So in all probability the Communist Party will recommend voting for Mitterrand,coupling it with the threat of subsequently opposing him if he does not include Communists in his government.
A somewhat similar dilemma faces Jac ques Chirac between the two rounds. He has solved it to his own satisfaction, if no one else's, by saying that he 'personally' will vote for Giscard but leaving his followers free to vote in accordance with their consciences. In short he is restricting himself to the bare minimum of lukewarm support for the outgoing President. There is no attempt to dramatise the issue and no hint that he will campaign for him. In those circumstances his declaration of support almost amounts to a declaration of neutrality. Abstention or even a vote for Mitterrand will be seen as having, if not his approval, at least his benevolent understanding. So the prospect is that Mitterrand will get not only the bulk of the Communist vote whatever the leadership says, but also a sizeable slice of the Chirac one. Given that, plus the 6 per cent polled by fringe left-wing candidates and a large share of the ecologist vote, Mitterrand should be poised to win even though on paper the total right vote still outnumbers the total left one by a percentage point or two.
Whoever wins, however, will face immediate problems with parliament and with Chirac who will be its effective ring-master. Slowly but surely, it would seem, France is edging back to the ways of the Fourth Republic where inter-party deals shaped governments and policies. Whoever wins will have to deal with Chirac to find a way out of the parliamentary deadlock. New parliamentary elections will not decrease his importance: they will only increase it. Mitterrand in any case is committed to an early dissolution with new elections before the summer. It is hard to see how he can win them, especially if the Communists even r their enfeebled state make mischief for him in the streets and in the factories as they have threatened. Whoever wins will have to face a hostile parliament — now and later. Mitterrand in addition will have to face almost from the start growing pressure on the franc with devaluation probably as the short-term outcome. Pulling him to the left will be his own party's stormy left wing, and pulling him to the right will be the so-called left-wing radicals whose support will be crucial to him both in the second round and in parliament. Giscard emerges as a sadly diminished figure after Sunday's vote, having dropped 4 per cent on his first-round vote in the 1974 election. He now commands the direct support of less than a quarter of the nation. Now if he wins he will live in the shadow of Chirac and by his grace. The winner, in short, will inherit a France strangely different to the one that existed before the election. The only good, indeed exhilarat ing, news to emerge from the whole affair is the debacle that has overtaken the French, Communist Party. For once L'Humanne makes joyous reading as it tries to unravel and explain away the consequences of its own brazen hypocrisy.
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