The logic of the French
Sam White
Paris Seven weeks ago — it now seems like seven years ago — the then President Giscard asked his challenger, the present President Mitterrand, in the course of a television debate, what appeared to be a deadly question: with what allies did Mitterrand propose to govern if he were elected? The question was based on two assumptions which seemed self-evident at the time — that Mitterrand would need allies, and that the most obvious to hand would be the Communists. Mitterrand dodged the question for obvious reasons hut it pursued him throughout the debate and after. Now, after last Sunday's vote in the first round of the French parliamentary elections, Giscard has his belated answer — Mitterrand looks like being able to govern with the Socialists alone at best, or in alliance with the left-wing Radicals at worst. He will not in short need the Communists to give him a parliamentary majority. On present indications it looks as though, after next Sunday's second ballot, the Socialists alone will have an absolute majority in the next National Assembly: a one-party feat which has been achieved only once before in the history of the Republic and that was, ironically enough, by the Gaullists after the events of May 1968. The second vote next Sunday, affecting the majority of candidates who did not win outright in the first round, may modify the result (especially in view of last Sunday's near-30 percent abstentions) but it
cannot change in essence what is a sweeping Socialist victory. In voting as they did the voters have been logical with themselves, almost to the point of exaggeration or caricature.
Having voted for Mitterrand as President, it was natural that they should have given him a further vote of confidence in the parliamentary election. To have done so on such a scale, however, almost suggests that they wanted to deprive him of the alibi that an ill-disposed National Assembly was blocking his socialist measures.
Mitterrand now has a virtually total liberty of action to carry out his projects and implement his ideas. Oddly enough, what these are remains in large part unknown. He himself is certainly not a Marxist but there is a large Marxist wing in his party, and there are Marxists of a particularly doctrinaire type in his government. True, the key posts in the government are held by social democrats but there are already signs of discordance between them and their more left-wing colleagues. Then there are the odd appointments to the President's personal staff at the Elysee, like that of the Latin American revolutionary and friend of Castro, Regis Debray, to the post of presidential foreign affairs adviser. Whatever kind of socialist the President himself turns out to be, he has at least time on his side in carrying out his declared programme including further nationalisation of major industries and what remains of the private banking sector in France, as well as such social measures as the introduction of the 35-hour week and a fifth week's holiday a year.
Time is what his luckless Socialist predecessors of the Third and Fourth Republics lacked. Leon Blum and his 1936 Popular Front government, for example, had to rush through his reforms, like the 40-hour week and paid holidays, in a matter of months before he was overthrown in a welter of economic and financial chaos. Mitterrand, however, can space his reforms over the next five years before he faces fresh parliamentary elections. Again unlike Leon Blum, he can afford to maintain a certain detachment from the Communists. He does not need them now, and the question of their participation in the government has therefore become largely theoretical. He can either put them 'on probation', as one member of the government suggested, for something like a year, or offer them one or two minor posts for no better reason than to keep them from exploiting such economic difficulties as the government might run into in the next few months.The present state of the French Communist Party is such that bringing them into the government might even produce a major split in its ranks in the near future. It would certainly help it to rid itself of its present leadership, a task which the voters have already largely accomplished on the parliamentary scene. The party's representation in the new Assembly looks like being more than halved, and most of the party's leading lights have lost their seats. The 'Red Belt' around Paris has been largely overrun by Socialists and Paris itself now finds itself without a single Communist deputy. As for their overall vote, which fell to 15 per cent in the presidential elections, it has remained at about the same level in the current one. This disposes of their explanation for the previous low vote as being due to the polarisation of Left votes around Mitterrand in the first round, to avoid the possiblity of Chirac emerging as Giscard's chief challenger. Altogether the Socialists have handled the Communist issue with great skill. For example, during the present campaign they have never attacked them or appeared to rejoice in their present plight. On the contrary, each time the Communists have come under attack fromtheRight some Socialist dignitary has defended them as being an integral part of the nation and recalled their sterling patriotism during the Occupation. This has been sound strategY, since it has deprived them of the kind Of instinctive solidarity which attacks from all sides would have produced. As for the almost equally defeated and humiliated Gaullists and Giscardiens, both fought bad campaigns based almost entirely on fear and on anti-Communism, and both have paid dearly for the Chirac-Giscard rivalrY. The wounds of that bitter struggle have net healed and they probably made the largest single contribution to the high level ot abstentions.
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