France

No massacre but a waltz

Nicholas Richardson

At mid-day on February 27, Pierre Messmer Presented the resignation of his government to M. Pompidou; at 6 pm he was reappointed Prime Minister, with a mandate to choose a homogeneous, stre, mlined new cabinet which could cope with both the energy crisis and spiralling inflation. On March 1 his cabinet was announced. And the effect was of bathos. The Messmer Mark III cabinet includes only sixteen full ministers, seven less than its predecessor. So much for streamlining. Should the "cohesion, solidarity and concentration" Pompidou demands be taken to mean a larger share of the posts for the Gaullist party itself, that's not immediately obvious in the new cabinet: ten members of the UDR as against thirteen in the previous and rather larger government. Should the energy crisis be thought to necessitate some sort of super ministry, there's none — except Olivier Guichard's heterogeneous collection or responsibilities, or the mildly Leavisite title Peyrefitte's ministry now carries. Culture and Environment.

Like Pinkie, Pompidou must have contemplated a massacre. There's not been one.

Two ministries have disappeared as such, DOM/TOM (so the sun really has set on the French Empire) and Ex-Servicemen. Maurice Druon, that rose without a Maugham who stepped into Malraux's shoes as Minister of Culture, has been dropped. And so has Stasi, who as Minister for Overseas Territories took a rather different view on world events to his colleagues, and Charbonnel, who managed not only to solve the Lip affair, but at the same time to make a fool of his Prime Minister. Not, of course, that this was an isolated occasion. If disagreement either with Messmer or a cabinet colleague was to be the criterion for dismissal, the new ministry would have seen a transfusion of new blood.

that would have rivalled science-fiction. Guichard and Messmer disagreed over fixing a speed limit on the roads; Giscard and Messmer disagree over almost everything — like the fact that 64 per cent of those recently polled think that lial6ry' is the politician with the greatest future — but so and more seriously do Giscard and that sub-acid Buster Keaton, the French Foreign Minister. In particular, over oil. With both of them remaining at their posts, so much for Pompidou's "authority and cohesion."

No massacre, then, but a waltz. Ana at nrst sight not much of one either; au bal des pompiers, c'est toujours les memes qui dan sent. Jean Royer, who gave the small shopkeepers a privileged corporate status

even Vichy had forgotten to enact, even Poujade had forgotten to claim, slides down a small snake to Posts and Telecommunica

tions. More important, Raymond Marcellin, the two-fisted and increasingly paranoid Minister of the Interior, barbouze de chez Fior, switches to the Ministry of Agriculture.

No doubt Marcellin was becoming an embarrassment — notably for his alleged role in

Watergaffe, the bugging of the. Canard Enchaine's office — but somehow I thought even his best friends would never tell him about it. More relevant is that his successor is Jacques Chirac. For two reasons. The first is that the least remarked disappearance from Messmer Mark III has been Robert Poujade. Yet Poujade, ex-Secretary General of the UDR, was a symbol both of the new generation's rise td power (he was only twelve in 1940) and widely seen as the archetypal Gaullist whizz-kid. Now that position is Chirac's. He is very much Pompidou's man — but rather more interesting, a close ally of the woman seen these days a& Pompidou's eminence grise, Marie-France Garaud.

Mme Garaud is officially only a technical adviser to the President. But then the upand-coming Michel Jobert came from that stable too. Everything suggests that as power becomes increasingly concentrated in the President's hands, and the Elyse increasingly a house without windows, the commentator should turn his attention not to those Gaullist barons way out in the limelight, but to the clandestine barons, Mme Garaud or Pierre Juillet, in the Elysee. Mme Garaud is favourable to Chirac; far more important, she greatly dislikes the former Prime Minister, Chaban-Delmas. She played a significant enough part at the Gaullist party conference at Nantes last November to prove this — and if not to wreck, then significantly to delay, Chaban's comeback.

Certainly Messmer's last government appeared both divided and ineffectual — as one Gaullist deputy confided, we don't know where we're going but we aren't getting there either. Certainly press speculation about its future both annoyed an increasingly choleric President and hampered governmental action. There was plenty of reason in Pompidou's wish for a psychological shock-effect, a government of decision that would have some thought other than "Is it urgent to wait — or just vital?" But the reason that it does is due both to Pompidou and the system. The system, because the French live in a climate of permanent elections; Pompidou, because he is driven to prefer loyalty to efficiency, hence Messmer. And the only thing Messmer's ever proved is that although "old soldiers never die, they simply fade away" there's no necessary contradiction involved.

Loyalty, because behind the present cabinet cosmetics there's the shadow of the presidentials, to take place at latest in 1976. And this explains 'the waltz of the toreadors.' The desire to create a sense of urgency, in the face of a crisis all too real, may explain the unhabitual manner Pompidou used to carry out what is, after all, a routine reshuffle. But it looks as if there's something else involved, It looks as if Pompidou did consider Giscard as the new prime minister — and then .changed his mind.

Once again this would explain the rather clumsy constitutional capering. But it would also explain Michel Jobert's performance at the Washington conference. Not so much his actions; after all, and people seem to have overlooked this, he actually went to Washington — but the deliberately offensive style. Yet over the previous years France had been making far more encouraging noises about Europe, in particular about European defence, than for a long time. This display of Gaullist pique was well calculated not only to send the Anglo-Saxons back to their stereotypes but to sugar the pill of a Giscard candidacy for the Gaullist hardliners.

Whatever the reason, the result is selfdefeating. Instead of choosing between potential candidates (Jacques Chirac is still a dark horse) Pompidou preferred to stall: both Giscard and Messmer, both Giscard and Jobert. But prices in January went up by a record 1.7 per cent, food prices now rise at an annual average of over 13 per cent. You may not fall in love with a growth rate as the student slogan had it, but with less than a 5 per cent annual growth rate France is going to face a brusque rise in unemployment. Already, to update Rochefort, the President has fifty-odd million subjects — not counting the subjects of discontent.