No room for two at the top?

FRANCE MARC ULLMANN

Paris--`0n 19 December 1965 I was re-elected President of the Republic for seven years by the French people. I have a duty, and the inten- tion, to fulfil that mandate to its term: Thus General de Gaulle on 22 January.

This stern affirmation of purpose was almost identical to a phrase included in the General's broadcast to the nation on 30 May 1968: 'I will not retire. I have a mandate from the people, and that I shall fulfil.' And yet between the two apparently similar statements there is one essential difference. In May it was a question of convincing public opinion that the road to revolution was blocked by the simple fact that the legitimate executive had no inten- tion of abdicating. This time it was a question of demonstrating that entrants for the succes- s;on stakes were premature. The warning was addressed, not to the revolutionaries and the anarchists with their flags of red and black, but to the faithful Gaullists who, in greater and greater numbers, are dreaming of the day when M Georges Pompidou will move his luggage into the Elysee Palace.

The General was of course answering the un- expected comments of his former Prime Minister in Rome a few days previously. A blow-by-blow account of M Pompidou's adven- tures in Rome is now available, and it is worth giving—not for its unexpectedness, but for its banality. M Pompidou received the journalists in his hotel room, and he repeated for their benefit what he has now been saying for months. Yes, he had given thought to the next presidential elections. Yes, he might be a candi- date when the time came. It was all so much of an aside that the former Prime Minister did not even bother to insist that it was confidential. He simply told the journalists 'that he did not wish any of his remarks—which were mostly about Franco-Italian relations and the place of

Western Germany in the world—to be quoted verbatim. Nevertheless, just one little phrase, and only one, was reported in quotes. And it was enough to put those few hundred people who are referred to in the French capital as 'political observers' into a fine frenzy.

The story gathered momentum. Obviously, the gossips told each other, M Pompidou was far too old a hand at the game to be caught napping by journalists. Hence his statement must amount to an official announcement of his M Georges Pompidou

candidature for the Presidency. Hence also he must have been given the green light by the present incumbent. So at once there was talk in the press and the parliamentary lobbies of a possible resignation of the President before the year is out: even perhaps, more precisely, im- mediately after the referendum on the govern- ment's plans for regional reform. The govern- ment backbenchers must start to build their plans round their new leader: the General was well on the way to being a 'lame duck' Presi- dent.

That, of course, was more than he could tolerate. Authority, to be credible, must have a certain expectation of continuance; and be- sides no monarch likes to see his court deserted in favour of an heir presumptive across the street. So the General uttered a brief reply to the brief remarks of his former Premier: and the Minister of information was instructed to repeat it for the benefit of the journalists.

So immediately the bottom dropped out of the Pompidou market. Those who, twenty-four hours earlier, were most insistent about the existence of a de Gaulle-Pompidou understand- ing. were now the first to talk of a public dis- avowal. They suggested that M Pompidou had rushed his fences and wrecked his career; that the President would henceforth look upon him not as a dauphin, but as a rival; and that the Gaullist parliamentarians would henceforth be constrained to cold-shoulder the very man they had been preparing to adore.

This reaction was every bit as ill-considered as the original story. The Presidential entourage subsequently let it be known that M Pompidou had been informed in advance of what the General intended to say. No attempt has been made to depose M Pompidou from his un- official standing as leader of the majority group in parliament. Indeed, the General is hardly in any position today to try conclusions with those rare individuals who, according to the public opinion polls, continue to enjoy a popular following.

So the first lesson to draw from this affair is that a new leading actor has entered on the scene, and the 'political observers' have not yet got used to the idea. Their concentration has been fixed for so long on the need to retain the favours of the Prince and on the corn- him:ion; of the existing establishment that they have overlooked the fact that, since 1965. the President is chosen by universal suffrage. My charwoman has no doubts on this score. As she read the headlines in the newspapers describing M Pompidou's asides in Rome, she commented 'well of course he's a candidate— what else did anyone think?'

In other words the General no longer has the stage to himself. If everyone is thinking about the succession, it is, of course, because there is something of a void at present: the void which. as I reported in these columns three weeks ago. is going to be the principal charac- teristic of French politics in 1969. From now all those splendid speeches about 'indepen- dence' and 'participation,' so dear to the heart of the head of state, are going to sound a little dated.

Meanwhile, the most recent example of the rapidly widening gap between the General and public opinion is, of course, the embargo on arms deliveries to Israel. He took this decision on 2 January. His ministers were informed on 8 January—ie, after the customs officials, who had already received their orders. Understand. ably most of the members of the government have been led to ask themselves why they should

have been treated in this manner. And five of them, at least, have come up with a pretty depressing answer. They believe that the General simply had no idea of the strength of the reaction his decision would provoke. They think he assumed that it would be treated rather like, let us say, President Johnson's decision to block the delivery of computers for the French nuclear deterrent system, or de Gaulle's own decision to stop sending arms to Nigeria. In short they accuse the President, not of a desire to take them personally down a peg, but quite simply of having blundered. Which is a good deal more serious.

They are not going to resign. But they have now got to the stage of saying that the Gaullist constitution was badly drafted : that it is absurd to pretend that the government is responsible to parliament if it is the President, and he alone, • who takes the decisions. They do not hide their opinion that they would like to see the estab- lishment of a 'true Presidential system'—a system of which M Pompidou just happens for some time to have made himself the pro- tagonist.

There is always something pathetic about a falling star. De Gaulle is no exception.