Holiday Tasks
By DARSIE GILLIE
GENERAL DE GAULLE does not often take holi- days away from home. He took one in the first fortnight of January, 1946, his first for five years. He came back from it with his mind made up to resign from the premiership and lead the opposition against the new theories of parliamen- tary sovereignty that were to give the Fourth Republic its specific character. He told no one, till he announced his decision six days after his return to an appalled Cabinet. President de Gaulle has again returned from just such a holiday in the South; for a week he saw no official personage except the local prefect making his duty call. Over more than five hundred miles of icy roads he returned by car on Monday to a Paris that was wondering what new surprise he was bringing with him on this occasion. One thing was certain. He would not on this occasion be resigning.
The President has till mid-March to concentrate on domestic and African affairs; thereafter he has the visit of Mr. K, followed by his own visit to the United States and then by the summit meeting in May. There are questions that will not improve by waiting till the summer. There is Algeria. The hopes of mid-November have died down. The Algerian 'Provisional Government' is insisting on political guarantees which it is hard for the Presi- dent to give. Revived terrorism has stimulated resentment amongst the European Algerians and so given new life` to the extremist organisations. • There is no sign of a revived alliance between them and the army, but the army does not at all like the prospect of guaranteeing free speech to ex-rebels while the referendum proposed by Presi- dent de Gaulle is in preparation. The atmosphere in Algeria is again unpropitious for negotiation and something big must be done to change it.
But another facet of the President's policy offers much more immediate hope—the decision to accept the demand of Mali (the federation of Senegal and the French Sudan) for independence While remaining in the Community. The terms of this new status have to be worked out and the Whole conception of the Community as defined in the Constitution has to be revised. This has hitherto made Community membership and inde- pendence incompatible. The negotiations with Mali will be, twofold—first, negotiations for ceding to Mali powers hitherto exercised by the central authority in Paris; second, negotiations for retroceding certain of these ceded powers so that they will be exercised on behalf of both France and Mali on a contractual basis. The whole will then have to be covered by a new chapter of the Constitution permitting this and facilitating a change of status similar to Mali's for other mem- bers of the Constitution. This change in the whole conception of the Community has naturally a bearing on the Algerian problem. The President has offered Algeria a status of `association' with Prance. Such a status must be something like Membership of the Community and it would be difficult therefore to deny to Algeria a right to independence like that of the Community mem- bers, because some paper distinction marked her off from them.
All this has been clearly seen by the French nationalist Right, which helped the President into office and joined in voting a constitution which attributes to him the duty of 'guaranteeing the integrity of the territory.' The French constitution leaves many things ill-defined, especially the powers of the President when he is acting as President of the French Community, a title that he holds in addition to that of President of the Republic. But the Right can at least put up a reasonable argument for the view that in offering self-determination to Algeria, and independence to Mali, without even a decision of the Govern- ment to- this effect, the President is acting ultra vires. This may be the devil quoting scripture, but it does point to a weakness in the President's position. The Constitution (his Constitution) says that the Government determines and conducts the policy of the nation. It is true that M. Chaban- Delnias, the president of the National Assembly, has produced out of his hat the theory of a reserved domain of policy, under Presidential direction which includes foreign policy, defence, Algeria and the Community, but you may read the Constitution threadbare without finding there a clear definition of any such thing.
It is not surprising therefore that on top of the African problems an internal political problem should emerge at this moment. At first sight it has nothing much to do with Africa. It had for long been public knowledge that the most independent of the Ministers was M. Pinay, the Minister of Finance and of Economic Affairs. Alone in the Government he enjoyed considerable support in a non-Gaullist section of opinion, namely the conservative party, or loose association of parties, called the Independents (with a capital this time) and Peasants. It was' M. Pinay who carried out the financial reforms of New Year, 1959, on an old-fashioned free-enterprise basis. He has taken it very ill that reforms should now be in prepara- tion which would extend State intervention in the distribution of Saharan petrol and the modernisa- tion of backward businesses and that would make obligatory the representation of employees on the boards of limited companies. He has also good reason to know that fellow Ministers are becom- ing very impatient with his refusal to countenance any large-scale wage revision.
M. Pinay insisted shortly after Christmas that he had been invited to join the Government in order to carry out his own policy and not a ' socialist one. If the Government wanted to change this policy it should make this clear by dismissing him. And the Government has now obliged by doing so.
There had been sundry other divergences. M. Pinay is a stout European, who in 1955 concluded the Treaty of Rome which creates the Common Market. He was also a zealous defender of the Atlantic Alliance and did not like to see it jeopardised. On these questions he had never con- cealed that he was a critic within the Government. He was the Minister of whom President de Gaulle said that he did not seem to know the number of the republic. He is in fact a product of the Third Republic for whom even the Fourth was an un- comfortable innovation.
The real issue between him and the President was therefore how far the members of a govern- ment should bring with them into the Cabinet the divergent opinions of the parliamentary majority instead of providing a varied diffraction of the presidential will, shedding light from above. It is not surprising that when Right-wing opposition to presidential policies should be mobilising itself, a crisis about the very conception of the Govern- ment should have come to the surface. Paradoxi- cally, one might almost say tragically, M. Pinay, man of the Right as he is in economic matters, is 'a liberal in Algerian and African affairs. He does not share the nationalist passions of his fellow Independents. But the real issue is whether the Right is to be allowed to use the attenuated par- liamentarism of the constitution against the President's policies in Mali and Algeria. The Parliament that was returned at the end of 1958 on a basis of largely negative emotions never looked as if it could be a very useful instrument to support the President's liberal conceptions beyond the Mediterranean. M. Debre's unfortu- nate handling of it has destroyed what little hope there was. President de Gaulle may, therefore, find himself turning into a Cromwell at home in order to avoid being one in the Algeria that is his Ireland.
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