Hope in the President

By DARSIE GILLIE Paris

HAD the French elections been conducted on a strictly proportional system the results would have been notable but not an earthquake. The Conservative vote grew by 25 per cent. Two

million voters for Poujade at the last election shifted back to the Gaullist candidates they had supported in the last but one, and so became an effective instead of a merely destructive force. The Catholic centre vote remained stable to within 5,000, though split between the old M RP and a semi-detached Right wing led by M. Bidault and calling itself Christian Demoeracy. The total vote for all kinds of Radicals and recently dissident or ejected Radicals sank by one-sixth, and for the orthodox Radical group by two-thirds. The Socialists were almost as stable as the Catholics, losing 14,000 votes. The Communists lost 1,600,000, over a quarter of their total, but were still the largest single party with 3,880,000, though fewer than the total Conservative vote in all its variety. This was at the first ballot. But the second, with all the injustice of a plain majority vote, and with voters abandoning their ideal preference for the possible, produced results that have surprised and delighted or shocked the world, according to taste. The Gaullist UNR showed much the greatest attraction for second choices, but even so won the enormously disproportionate number of 188 deputies (instead of sixteen), while the Com- munists shrank from 143 to ten. The Socialists dropped from ninety-one to forty, the MRP from seventy-two to forty-four—or fifty-seven with the Christian Democrats.

Artificially exaggerated as is the picture of French opinion given by the Assembly, it none the less does express the dynamic of the situation.

The change in the voting system was itself popular. Though the detailed delimitation of constituencies was deliberately disastrous for the Communists, neither Socialists nor Radicals can seriously com- plain. They, especially the latter, had clamoured for a return to single-member constituencies. There is certainly a good deal of surprise in France at the result, but the dramatic defeats—of M. Mendes-France, for instance; of the Left-wing Gaullists; of Socialists like M. Jules Moch who had tried to save the Fourth Republic, or like M. Defferre, who had offended one set of voters by advocating a yes-vote at the referendum, and another by his courageous demand for a real change of policy in Algeria; of M. Edgar Faure, perhaps the ablest of recent premiers, but one who did much damage to the Republic by the excessive subtlety of his tactics and his purely cerebral appeal—all were typical of the movement of opinion. The current is nationalistic and in favour of simple arguments (or even none) for simple men. The one Fourth Republic leader wh° emerges with his positibn intact, or almost so, is M. Pinay, the Conservative, with his shrewd Ault limited outlook and his gift for keeping a man's confidence.

The country certainly wanted something new —and it has got it. Like all sudden expensive pur- chases, this one will arouse belated regrets, but not a desire to go back to the old situation. The most dangerous aspect of the new Assembly is probably the grotesque under-representation of the Cominunists. In the working-class the injustice of it will be so obvious as to conceal the real Communist defeat—the loss of a quarter of the Communist vote. In the bourgeoisie it will conceal the massive surviving strength of the Communists.

It provides, in other words, excellent camouflage for a long-overdue reconstruction of the C:om- munist Party.

But what of the UNR, the dominant party? The peculiarity of Gaullism is that it is not the direct expression of de Gaulle. It is a movement of his admirers, or of those for whom his name syMbolises an escape from the impersonal ob- scurity of French parliamentary intrigue. The

doctrine is hard to find. The ..General himself, about to go up into the non-party sanctuary of the Elysee Palace as President of the Republic, has refrained from overt guidance. M. Soustelle, when asked to explain the significance of the

election results, said that first of all the nation

had wished to express for a third time its con- fidence in the General (an unjustified insult to

the intelligence of Frenchmen, who prefer the clarity of a single statement to the obscurity of repetition) and, secondly, a desire to remove from power all those who were suspected, rightly or wrongly, of wishing to loosen the bonds between France and Algeria. This last is near the mark and will at all events be the interpretation of the election results adopted by the leaders of the new majority. This will severely limit the range of action open to the new government when it is formed. President de Gaulle may well be still farther from his goal of conciliation in North Africa than was Prime Minister de Gaulle, not only because he will not be in control of the actual levers of decision (he is at present both

Minister of National Defence and Minister for Algeria), but because the majority in the new Assembly will have committed itself to a vcd decided view.

In many respects—social and economic for instance—there will be at least as much repulsiort as attraction between the UNR and its neigh-

hours and probable allies, the Conservative In- dependents sitting on the extreme right of the Assembly. Will there also be agreement for a diminution of republican tolerance for free- spoken criticism?

While President de Gaulle may watch philo- sophically disputes on financial policy, he has been careful to equip his Fifth Republic with constitutional guarantees and may not be in- different about the rights of the small opposition. He has, after all, built a republic which he hopes Will last. He knows that pendulums swing. He knows also that some of his followers who are now very prominent were not amongst the most faithful to his wishes in a recent past. He knows that the potential opposition to any government corresponding to the new majority in the Assembly is, on the evidence of voting strength, considerable.

When the Constitution was drafted, the reduc- tion in the powers of the Assembly and the great increase in those of the President of the Republic were the main subject of criticism. Today some of the critics are hoping that the President's powers will prove real enough to check the newly elected Assembly.