Wanted —A Political Green Thumb
Front DARSIE GILLIE PA RI AL regimes, Le Monde recently observed, are born in political sin—defeat, rebellion or conspiracy. The problem for any regime is to surmount these origins. Some never do. The Bourbon Restoration and the Third Republic were both children of defeat, The July Monarchy of Louis Philippe, the Second Republic and the Fourth were born of rebellion (in the last case, of course, favoured by external circumstances). The Fifth Republic shares with the two Bonaparte monarchies birth in conspiracy. Whereas the regimes born in the other two circumstances are very varied, there is an obvious likeness between those with a conspiratorial origin—one that the builders of the Fifth Republic find distressing. It is, they admit, a monarchical republic, but it is a republic, and the government is even responsible to Parliament. M. Debrd was no doubt a con- spirator, but this first labour, once in office, was a legally-minded one—to reform the code of penal procedure, which had indeed been patched and repatched, but not replanned for 150 years. (Alas. that parallel again; this takes us back to Napoleon I!) The reformed code of penal procedure was intended to provide guarantees for the individual similar to those for which we praise British methods, and the new constitution, for which the same M. Debr6 was to a considerable exter responsible, was to produce governments on th Westminster model that would normally last for the lifetime of a Parliament. Such prosaic an virtuous labours, it might be thought, would etfac a conspiratorial past.
But they have not yet been entirely successful.-4 The political structures raised have not yet acquired a natural life. The Code of Penal Procedure need-' not keep us long. It undoubtedly contains many,f improvements, but has not so far speeded things 0; up. Slow-motion justice has some compensatin virtues, especially in times of disturbance, but it :- cannot produce results at all like the relatively rapid.justice of England. The times have not been propitious at any rate. How do you adjust respect able Western forms of trial to a state of affair in which, as in Algeria, interrogation under ; electric shock is still being practised? The present Minister of Justice, M. Michelet, has most cour- ageously done what he could to humanise the prisons in which thousands of Algerians await trial as well as serving sentences. He has seen ti it that the charges brought by Mme Audin of the torture and murder of her husband by parachutist :4 officers should be at least properly investigated by a civilian magistrate, even though a trial ma: be a long way off, for that would be a matter for a military court.
It is M. Debrd's constitutional machinery that is making strange rattling noises—of a kind you would associate with a Heath Robinson machine, if the picture were sonovised. The Fifth Republic Constitution is remarkable for the ample provi- sion it makes for emergency. A government really cannot fail to get its budget made law unless there is a majority in the Assembly for a vote of censure to turn if out of office. But who would have thought that a government based on the trium- phant majorities of the November 1958 election needed any such thing? Yet it was by such means that the budget had to be dragged through the Assembly on its first passage up to the Senate. A Procedure was adopted by which there need be lio vote at all except on a motion of censure, and On a motion of censure only opposition votes are counted, so that the half-hearted abstainer is automatically reckoned a government supporter. When the budget came back amended from the Senate there was a vote on it—a majority of 220 to 172 with 107 abstaining! Not all the Gaullist UNR voted for the Government, and a bare two score of other parties. It is true that by now the unhappiness of the deputies about a budget that continued to deprive the war veterans of their annual bonus was being supplemented by the distrust of both clerical and anti-clerical for the new education Bill. Of that inure in a moment. But behind the particular objections there was the fundamental revolt of deputies against a disquieting feeling that they Were not deputies. What were they there for? M. Debrd's ingenious mechanical devices for Preventing a government being swept out of oflice by a combination of extreme Right and extreme Left that could never unite constructively, or by a mere access of bad temper, do not produce the same result as at Westminster, because at West- minster the government is, after all, the product of the party that has won the last election. M. Debrd is indeed a member of the party that won over 200 seats, but he is not its leader. His Govern- ment is not a product of that party or of a coali- tion of the victorious parties. The government results from President de Gaulle's desire for as eclectic a Cabinet as the circumstances permit. The Gaullist UNR has indeed no one to blame but itself for its sterile victory. It insisted on declaring that to vote UNR was to vote for de Gaulle, although the latter had made it clear in advance that he was going to consider himself above party. M. Soustelle is undoubtedly the naturalleader of the UNR, but M. Soustelle is himself caught between his deep commitments to President de Gaulle and his increasing opposition to the Presi- dent's Algerian and African policies. ln consequence the only deputies who seem fairly happy in the parts they are playing are the opposition ones. Neither in the Third or the F_dltrth Republics has there been a more frustrated Parliament than the present one. The majority is Caught as much in the meshes of its own follies as in those of the constitution. It cannot bring down the Government without immediate self- destruction at a new election, or Maintain it with- out self-destruction at a later one. The position presents no danger to the Government. But it does mean some humiliation for it. Confident in its majority and its constitution, the Government had decided to demonstrate that the insoluble prob- lems of the Third and Fourth Republics were no problems at all for a government that was a government—veterans' bonuses, home distillers' privileges, and religion in schools, all should be dealt with in the Government's first year of office. The effect on the budget of trying to abolish veterans' bonuses has already been mentioned. The Bill to extinguish gradually the home- distillers' rights was so amended in the Assembly that no one is quite sure whether it increases or diminishes them. The Government has quietly postponed the matter till next summer': The Government's school Bill may well be a judicious and philosophic solution. It has the heroic merit of being disliked passionately by both the sup- porters and the opponents of religious instruction in schools. It shows no signs of reconciling them.
Meanwhile, what of the problem of the regime's birth in political sin? The National Assembly is the only national institution based directly on universal suffrage. It was through an excessive domination of political life by the National Assembly that the Fourth Republic succeeded in escaping from its own sinfully subversive origins. The remedy proved as bad as the disease. As far as the present regime is concerned the Parliament is needed not merely as a legislative machine, but as a source of popular contact and political strength for the Government which is otherwise at the mercy of bureaucrats and conspirators. Without a lively Parliament the Government will be a mere appendage of the Presidency. The Presi- dent will have to be for ever an Atlas, holding up the heavens on his shoulders and increasingly unable to intervene amongst mere pigmies.
The new Gaullist leaders, too, do need to establish their personal prestige on a real contact with the masses if their own conspiratorial past is to be forgotten. That of M. Debrd himself was sharply brought to public attention by an opposi- tion leader, Senator Mitterrand, struggling in the toils laid for him by Right-wing conspirators, who probably dislike the Government even more than tic does. M. Mitterrand recalled that when Minister of Justice he had not asked for the suspension of the parliamentary immunity of an opposition senator called Debrd involved in much more awkward suspicions than those which have fallen upon himself. For conspirators do not always know with whom to conspire and some of Senator Debrd's conspiratorial contacts, direct or indirect, had turned out very awkward customers indeed. Equally dangerous contacts have marked one stage of the career of many a lawgiver. They do not matter much if the laws becorhe part of a growing political system. They are an ugly prece- dent if the laws do not.
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