A taste of defeat
Woodrow, Alain
Report from France A TASTE OF DEFEAT LES CITOYENS ARE STILL RESTLESS FRANCE'S LEFT-WING COALITION government, in power for ten months, has had its first taste of defeat. The local elections,...
...But in the local "cantonal" elections, although the Communist vote fell even further, to a mere 13.5 percent, the disenchanted voter did not vote Socialist automatically...
...The left did not deny its defeat, and accepted the results as "a warning to be heeded...
...In the opinion, polls, for example, the most popular figures are situated in the middle of the political spectrum (Simone Veil, Michel Rocard, Jacques Delors...
...By voting for the left last May, it was equality and social justice that were uppermost in their minds...
...The main reasons for the latest setback are linked to the failure of the government to fulfill its ambitious promises...
...President Mitterrand's somewhat rash judgment that "since May 10, the political majority is in conformity with the sociological majority" is open to question...
...Were the voters who abstained or defected dissatisfied because the Socialist reforms have been too timid or, on the contrary, excessive...
...won an overall majority with 51.86 percent of the ballots cast, as against 48.05 percent for the right...
...and the project of the present government to introduce some measure of proportional representation should prove interesting...
...But the important thing was the number of seats...
...Should the pace of reform be accelerated or should there be a pause...
...It is also true that local elections are traditionally a means for the disgruntled citizen to voice his criticism of the government in power without affecting the real centers of power, which are the presidency and the National Assembly...
...In terms of votes, the left (Socialists, Communists, left-wing Radicals, etc...
...The French are a nation of individualists and, paradoxically, they are both revolutionary (by fits and starts) and very conservative (for the rest of the time...
...The impressive victory of Franpois Mitterrand and then of the left-wing parties last year, was less a vote of confidence for socialism than a disavowal of Valery Giscard d'Estaing and the ministers who had dominated the political scene for more than twenty years...
...But the basic lesson of these elections is the warning administered to the governing coalition by the center-of-the-road voters...
...but by issuing a warning to the government just ten months later, they now wish to draw attention to the dangers of excessive state control and bureacracy as well as register their dissatisfaction with economic policy...
...the right claims fifty-nine departmental presidents, while the left have only thirty-six...
...There are three mitigating factors, however...
...It should be remembered that the vast majority of the French people are not extremists...
...Second lesson to be heeded by the government: the provinces - or "la France profonde" as politicians like to have it - are far from happy with the wide-ranging reforms being put into practice by the new coalition...
...Under legislation that has already been partly approved - the rest is to be introduced shortly - the presidents of the departmental councils, nearly two-thirds of whom belong to the opposition, will exercise the substantial local powers previously held by the Paris-appointed prefects...
...The local elections, which were held on March 14 and 21, resulted in a marked swing to the right...
...and though there are signs that the economic machine is starting up again, speculation on the franc - at home and abroad, and often for basely political motives - threatens to nip this particular socialist rose in the bud...
...It is the present electoral system, with its two ballots, which polarizes French politics...
...First, the Socialist party remains the foremost French political group, both in votes (35.04 percent) and seats (504...
...Second, the election was not national but partial (provincial government council elections are held in half of France's cantons every three years...
...As in most Western democracies, France is fairly evenly divided into two halves, left and right, and it is the small shifting mass in the middle that determines the victory of either side, by a small margin...
...In the recent legislative elections, the Communist vote dropped from its traditional 20 percent to 15 percent - an all-time low since the war - and the Socialists were indeed the main beneficiaries of the collapse...
...But in this case, power has changed hands to a significant degree, and ironically due to the reforming zeal of the Socialists themselves...
...Here, the left won 798 seats, (losing 101), while the right won 1,147, gaining 268...
...Political analysts in the three coalition parties (Socialists, Communists, and left-wing Radicals) are busy arguing about the cause of the March defeat...
...In concrete terms, this means that the right-wing opposition forces have gained control of the majority of departmental assemblies, the conseils generaux...
...They want to have their cake and eat it, aspiring to equality without forfeiting their freedom...
...It appears obvious that the manifest discontent cannot be interpreted as a call for more radical change - otherwise, the Communists would have gained ground instead of taking further losses...
...And third, the results of these elections in no way affect the balance of forces in parliament...
...If it is true that local elections are not usually regarded as having a major political importance, the campaign that preceded the last vote was highly ''politicized" and "polarized'' - mainly by the polemical attitude of the opposition - and the turnout was much higher than usual (only 30 percent abstentions...
...Little has been done to improve the economy: if inflation has eased slightly, unemployment continues to rise...
...ALAIN WOODROW...
...An immediate worry, paradoxically, is the decline of the Communist party...
...In the opposition, on the other hand, the unity of the two main right-wing forces, ex-President Giscard d'Estaing's UDF and Jacques Chirac's RPR, put up a totally united front...
...Decentralization - a concept dear to General de Gaulle, but which had become a hoary chestnut under the previous regime - is at last about to see the light of day, thanks to a far-reaching reform elaborated by Gaston Defferre, mayor of Marseilles and Minister of the Interior...
...Francois Mitterrand's long-term strategy of weakening his Communist ally in order to persuade the workers to vote Socialist has proved only too successful - in part...
...Several lessons must be learned if the Socialists wish to retain the support of their electorate between now and 1985, date of the next legislative elections...
...In fact, the right-left dichotomy is basically false...
Vol. 109 • April 1982 • No. 8
