No triumph for Giscard
Sam White
Paris Only the Communists can derive unmitigated satisfaction from last Sunday's Euro-vote in France. As for the rest, they can share in varying degrees the disappoints of a poll which, one year after the general elections, has drastically redrawn the political map of France. Here are the Gaullists, for example, who remained after March 1978 as still the biggest single vote-catchers in the country — reduced flow to last place among the four major political formations. Here are the Socialists, who seemed certain a year ago to be forging irresistibly ahead to first place, coming instead a bad second behind the Giscardiem and (an even greater humiliation) their once promised masterful lead over the Communists reduced to a mere three percentage points. And here is the Giscardien list, headed by the immensely popular Mme Veil and openly backed by the President and the Prime Minister — falling well below Its apparently certain 30 per cent and more of the vote. To add salt to these wounds, the electorate answered the President's appeal for a massive turnout with a record 40 per cent abstentions. Only the Communists, singlehanded and in the first election under proportional representation since the early Post-war years, did better than expected and achieved their target of polling just over 20 Per cent. Thus it can be said that the abstentionists and the Communists between them robbed the election of the greater Part of its European significance as well as making something of a mockery of its domestic pretensions — especially those connected with the presidential elections in 1981.
The poor turn-out was a clear expression of public confusion, if not downright disgust, at the evident disingenuousness of the campaign waged by all the political parties— again with the exception of the Communists. What was the use, for example, of the Giscardiens — many of them staunch advocates of supra-nationalism in the past — swearing that the newly elected European Assembly would remain as powerless as the old nominated one and then urging people to vote for what would be a mere talking shop? What was the use of Gaullists pledging themselves to oppose dastardly supranational schemes, which the President had in the most solemn manner already pledged himself to oppose? And what was the point of the Socialists, with their long record as pioneers of a united Europe, joining in this chorus of 'me-tooism'? If the electorate saw in all this the cynical manoeuverings of politicians anxious to make an issue of a non-issue, they saw correctly. The inevitable result was that a huge proportion of them voted not with their feet but with their bottoms — they stayed put. There was another aspect of the campaign which sorely puzzled the voters and this was one which affected the size solely of the Gaullist vote. The voters simply could not understand the attitude of the Gaullist leader, Jacques Chirac. How could he remain at one and the same time a supporter of the government and its fierce opponent? How could he remain a member of the government coalition while assailing every aspect of its policies from domestic to European? How could he, in short, support it in parliament while fighting it in the country? It is a question which has dogged Chirac ever since he left his post as Giscard's first prime minister, and it dogged him in a particularly acute fashion throughout this election campaign. To take just one example — he declared himself to be opposed to direct elections to the European Assembly, yet it was he himself while prime minister who had steered through the very Bill fixing the date on which they should be held. While we wait for a psychiatrist to answer these questions, Chirac will this week be facing a party inquest into his leadership. But, although it is true that by polling 16 per cent of the vote he fell far short of the minimum target of 20 per cent which he set himself, he still polled better than the disastrous 14 per cent which the polls predicted for him. Sixteen per cent, it can be argued, is not an unrespectable total and still gives the party the nucleus of greater potential strength, especially as the economic situation continues to worsen. In a way a really bad result would have been better for him than the present mediocre one, for in those circumstances the Gaullists tend to close ranks rather than split. As it is, a split— and a three way split at that — is now in the making. Chirac has already gone part of the way to meet the threat by throwing overboard two of his closest unofficial official advisers — Pierre Juillet and Madame Garaud whose 'occult' influence on him has long been denounced within the party. Giscard can further accentuate it by appointing Gaullist ministers in place of those elected to Strasbourg. The split itself is between those who want a reconciliation with Giscard, those who want to maintain the present 'vigilant support' and those, led by Michel Debre and numbering about fifty, who want to go into outright opposition. It is a stormy outlook.
Almost equally troublesome is the outlook for the Socialist leader, Mitterrand. The revolt inside his own party is bound to grow as a result of the Socialists' own relatively poor showing, especially in relation to the Communists. 'Archaic' is the word used for him by his chief rival Michel Rocard, and a certain world-weary lassitude showed clearly in his conduct of the campaign. He is, also, an odd figure in the international socialist phalanx elected to Strasbourg — neither revolutionary red meat nor reformist fowl. If he survives, it will be only because no one else can impose unity on the motley flock he leads. As for Giscard's continuing dream of the Socialists joining him, this will remain a mirage so long as the government's present economic policies remain in force. And so, to conclude: only the Communists are happy in their fortress, and they are busy digging even deeper the ideological moats protecting it.
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