French election
La peau de Chaban
Nicholas Richardson
"If we don't make fools of ourselves," one senior Gaullist exulted some time ago, "we'll still be in power in the year 2000." "Gaullism," a minister echoed more recently, "will be France's point of reference for 100 years or more." "Of all the political forces in France," the Secretary General of the UDR said on March 30, "the Gaullists are the best equipped to react to any sudden crisis." Three days later Pompidou died. Within a week the Majority had split, within ten days the government had ceased to exist, 'within six weeks the Gaullist candidate came a poor third in the first round, his proportion of the vote marginally less than that of even the Centrist outsider, Jean Lecanuet, in 1965. There was worse. Jacques Chaban-Delmas took only some 20 per cent of the vote (anomalies like Corsica or the Comores apart) in his own department of the Gironde and its hinterland, King of his sorrows, he remained precariously Duke of Aquitaine.
And a convenient scapegoat. There were Gaullists who for various reasons hadn't wanted Chaban to stand at all; others who had wanted to eliminate the painful necessity of choosing between Chaban and Giscard, the freres ennemis who everyone knew would stand, and thought Messmer's empty helmet could hold a united Majority. Their doubts over the wisdom of a Chaban candidacy became a self-fulfilling prophecy: if Chaban's candidacy sank almost without trace, it was because his colleagues sabotaged it.
A candidate in a French presidential election needs a power-base, but also a national reputation and resonance wider than his own party can provide. Giscard and Mitterrand ha
it made. For Chaban things weren't so sinillied' Ii Dismissed by Pompidou in summer 1972, he, r! been more or less out of the public eye For all his cautious come back at the Gau"li'A G congress at Nantes last November, he coo g hardly move centre-stage without offending it his peers, and potential supporters in the UDR. More even than Chaban's popularit?il with Gaullist militants, Nantes showed the extent of the hostility Pompidou's private sta!it t( and their front-man Jacques Chirac fe„I u towards the former prime minister: and tne distrust backbenchers had for a man WII°sec di 'New Society' no doubt still seemed ad, dangerous as a shower of meteorites. TheY reflected accurately enough a Gaullist elec• torate a good deal further to the right than leaders, one reason why the relativelyti Gaullist frontliners who actively backey p Chaban failed to deliver the goods even t( their own backyards. Chalandon at Asniere' ti Charbonnel at Brive, Peytefitte at Provins even Debre at Amboise, Guichard at IA
Baume. I`
The day after Pompidou died, Chirac and tE the Pompidou clan were already consideringJ'a Messmer candidacy, and Chaban knew it. clile t( April 4 he made his pre-emptive strike will sE Messmer was delivering Parliarhent's tribute, to the former president. It was a gamble an" it didn't pay off. It genuinely shocked sorh,et a! nice-minded people; more seriously it dicln„ disarm the Pompidolians. On Sunday the It', the Central Committee of the UDR met all' after some discussion, Messmer included, the); IA gave Chaban their formal backing. Two d9t Cl later Messmer launched his own candidacY. lasted a mere nine hours, but it put an end t°d ir the idea of an apostolic succession — an cl,
virtually to Chaban's hopes as well. • e(
The man behind the move was Chiralldi Messmer was the plotter in chief, the hardliners said furiously on May 6. Oh no, sal, rp a less than usually austere Couve de Murvihe G only le chef des cuisines. The previous Sun' fo day Chirac had opposed a Chaban candidacY for a variety of reasons (there would be tun much talk about Chaban's famous taxes, lack of them; Chaban would mean Giscard,g) the two would quarrel all the way to the polls e( and Mitterrandwould walk it). There was atlUI element of truth in all this — Ch1rac,10 proceeded to make it a certainty. A peculiail vicious smear campaign against Chabah, began. Oddly enough, no one seemed remember Chateau-Chirac, the fact that Or country property the minister had bought few years before had immediately atl pi conveniently been classified as an historica,' A monument. Then on the 13th Chirac and Ills, supporters signed the 'Appeal of the Fortr Three'. It was in no one's favour, so implicitlY a vote of no confidence in the official GaulliSl candidate. It recommended a free vote on tile first round, an excellent idea but a bit lat,! after Chaban's endorsement and Messmer,: queue de poisson. It looked loftily towards 0' I future of Gaullism, a hint to Gaullists to keel; their powder dry and an implied disavowal 0. the party candidate. Above all, it finished ullJi fparceatednece of Gaullist unity, even as a dutign -It has its effect. Chaban had moved so ear ,1,); that his campaign was in top gear a fortnig" before the official electoral campaign begab:,! month before the first round, and went stale , before his rivals had even produced the°. It programmes. But an election's not kt programme so much as a personality, a brat!: Pi image. Chaban's staff had wanted to play bi°' 1-■ as a winner, two-star general at twenty-n'rle; Mayor of Bordeaux at thirty-two, Frill:: N Minister; and as a statesman, not a mue' married athletic playboy. It was a shambles: ,tV Chaban didn't seem serious, just tenset; because of Chirac's antics, he spent so MI-1°,2" time emphasising his backing among the Up.; di that he seemed increasingly the prisoner 0' 4,1 historic Gaullists like Debre, even palaeolithic es like Fouchet. He was still stressing his 'Inks with the past when Giscard had moved to talk almost entirely of the future. As a result he was blamed for everything that the electorate disliked in the 'UDR State,' while Giscard, with his talk of a young, dynamic Pvernment, purveyed an image that became Increasingly that of the anti-Chaban. As the campaign proceeded, as Chaban ruoved from one ill-attended meeting to another, avoided or at best tolerated by the tOP UDR brass, the smell of failure became unmistakable. At best he attracted nostalgia, att worst pity: "Don't bother about the polls, Jacques," Mitterrand said comfortingly, "they don't mean anything"; and Francoise Giroud, writing in L'Express, forbore attacking him at 41,11 — "you don't fire on an ambulance." Too gje, just before his campaign ended. Chaban cpuanged his tone. The electorate had found f°Inpidou a more than reassuring alternative 't°, the General in 1969. Now it looked as if eY preferred Giscard to Chaban for the 11, e reasons. Caught in the centre, forced to If3Jay the Centrist card, vote for me or you'll tsce a left-right confrontation, Chaban bela,,ecilY stressed the social side of Gaullism, and :Month too late found his audience. It was "Jo late to affect the vote. It need not necestilY have been too late to save what's left of aullism at its more attractive. Now that Giscard has stolen their electorate al's Well as their clothes (he even beat Chaban to second place at Colombey-les-deuxJlises) the Gaullists have three options. nse that have not already done so can jump u!-1 to the Giscard bandwagon, their cons,ci.ence calmed both by the prospect of a really `1tY second round fought on an anti-Comnist ticket with no holds barred — ca sera c"14 Catch — and Sanguinetti's disabused 1d9rnment that history always forgives gran0 Se betrayals. `s41) doubt most will — Giscard as President rtGlJght well have a faithful Chabanite like f Uichard as Prime Minister, as well as a place Or Chirac and Jobert. They can become a vartY of nostalgia, the class of 1940: "After ItZ,' the General once said, "it'll be Lourdes, 11„eY'll be selling off the Cross of Lorraine c"acie out of nugat." Or just conceivably, they a°111d form a 'social' pressure group, rid of an ,tngeing and largely upper-middle-class elec"rate. May 1958. May 1968. May 1974?
N.IVicholas Richardson, author of The French ‘fluefectoral Corps, is currently writing Apres aullisme
Previous page
