A Darkling Perspective
From DARSIE GILLIE
PARIS
THE triumph of January 29 has been brief. For a moment we were back with the Charles de Gaulle of the Resistance with more suppprt from the Centre and Left than from the Right. When the Debra Government was ready to capitu- late to the pressure of the Right-wing insurgents of Algiers, the President had reasserted in no Uncertain terms that there was no military solu- tion for Algeria, that peace was to be sought on a basis of self-determination, and that the army executed but did not devise policies. The note of hope still rang in his speeches in Southern France in the middle of February. But by the end of the month he was being quoted to a very different tune from command posts of Algeria that he Was inspecting. 'Quoted' is a key-word in this connection for he was no longer speaking in public; only one journalist, a representative of the Agence France Presse, accompanied him and the chief source of news was an army spokesman in Algiers. The contrast between the President's new declaration and the old ones might have been Less sharp if there had been access to all he said, but the important fact was that he accepted this form of communication. He was making declara- tions of first-class importance through, and there- fore filtered by, the army. The new note was one of complete pessimism about negotiating a cease-fire. The army must finish the war. It would have an essential func- tion for long after that (not in itself new, since the President had always declared that there must be a period of up to four years between a cease- fire and a referendum.) To balance this news, Welcome to the army and to the Right but to no one else, the President flung in a new slogan : An Algerian Algeria linked with France.' While theoretically preserving the aim of self-deter- !Inflation he definitely associated 'secession' with Partition, which is abhorred by the Algerian nationalists, and no less definitely rejected as iinpossible the attempt to make Bretons or Normans out of Algerian Moslems and to con- tinue the government of Algeria from Paris. In Other words, he had committed himself to back- ing one of the three alternatives, to be submitted to the Algerian people so clearly that he was prejudging the issue. The term an 'Algerian Algeria' was not pleas- ing to the ears of many officers and abominable to the ears of French nationalists. Still, the army destiny pleased with the prospect of having the uestiny of Algeria to all intents and purposes entrusted to it. But everywhere else the new approach, to the Algerian problem aroused a con- sternation that the President had apparently failed to foresee. The strongest'single element in the support hc enjoyed amongst metropolitan Frenchmen and North African Moslems had been the hope that he would succeed in ending the war. With his own hands he had struck away this buttress and at the same time roused one more angry protest against the ambiguities of his statements. In the past he has in fact been ambiguous for careless readers only. But on this occasion it is impossible, to put the blame on any shoulders than his own.
The cause of the change must be found in some change of assessment of the situation, but a change which he has not acknowledged. Pre- sumably he has come to the conclusion that he could never reduce the demands of the rebel leaders to a point at which they would be accept- able to the army without risking a new and much more dangerous crisis than that of last January. Therefore the more the rebels limited their demands to guarantees of neutrality for the referendum the more dangerous these demands became. He must break off the indirect negotia- tions, conversations, contacts or however else they were to be described, and transfer his hopes to the emergence of a more moderate Moslem nationalist party that would accept his new formula, 'an Algerian Algeria linked with France.' Unfortunately no such party has shown signs of coming into existence, although there may well be a large body of Algerian opinion that wishes it would. The opportunities to deal with leaders who would have been delighted to negotiate on such a basis were thrown away years ago and present stresses make it doubtful whether they could be created again.
But the damage to the President's position is not limited to the Algerian problem in itself. The Socialists had so far limited their opposition and the Catholic MRP had accepted participation in the Government, because of the Algerian hopes that the President had aroused. Now the Social- ists are in formal opposition on the Algerian issue since they continue to demand a negotiation for a cease-fire that will not be a capitulation, and a round-table conference on guarantees for the referendum. The MRP has made it clear through its secretary-general that if there is no immediate hope for peace in Algeria, then it can no longer turn a blind eye to the internal development of the regime. Explosive discontent in the farming world is compelling every party to look to its country voters. At the behest of the principal French farmers' organisation, deputies of all parties, except the Gaullist UNR, have demanded the early recall of Parliament to discuss agri- culture. The constitution provides that if half the deputies plus one demand the recall of Parlia- ment for a specific purpose the President calls it together for that purpose but that purpose only. Under the last constitution a similar pro- vision was automatic, though questions of date left a little play. It was generally supposed that the provision was also automatic under the present one, but the President has always claimed that he is under no circumstances a legal auto- maton, and that in this case, as in others, his function must be to act after due consideration and perhaps therefore not to recall Parliament.
In other words, at the moment when the parties have lost, or at least seem greatly weakened, their motive for accepting the President's decisions as final, because he was carrying the banner of peace in Algeria, the President may take up an attitude which severely weakens what is left of parliamentary control under the Fifth Republic. This ultimate control is being weakened from another side. Rather than get rid of Ministers the President seems to be developing a system of committees presided over by himself to work out policy on great issues of state. The Government is therefore becoming a body of administrative co-ordination rather than of political decision. It is the Government, however, not the President, that is responsible to Parliament. Will it be worth while, in such circumstances, to bring the Govern- ment down?
Thus both the Algerian problem and the prob- lem of the regime are pressing for renewed atten- tion at the moment at which the President would like to give all his mind to the visit of Mr. Khrushchev, to his own visits to London, Wash- ington and Ottawa, and finally to the summit conference. It is not what he had hoped for. The only good result, if it is a result, has been the President's return to the cultivation of an old friendship, that of Britain, on the same terms of intimacy as he has hitherto reserved for his new friendship with Western Germany.
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