France's Electoral Aftermath
JACOBS, NORMAN
POLARIZED PARTIES France's Electoral Aftermath by Norman Jacobs The French Left's dream of victory in the legislative elections vanished within seconds after the first-round balloting ended on...
...But, to be fair, they probably constitute the least significant reason for the policy...
...Oblige the Communists to instruct their followers to vote for the Socialists in the second round because it is more to their interest to vote Socialist than to keep the Right in power...
...This will give Giscard a solid, organized base of support in the legislature and strengthen his hand in dealing with the Gaullists...
...While the Left licks its wounds and ponders its future, it is springtime in Paris for French President Valery Gis-card d'Estaing, figuratively as well as literally...
...It generates an increased sense of frustration among the half of the electorate whose leaders are denied, however legitimately, access to the seats of power...
...But the PCF's behavior and tactics since last September have stirred doubt that it has in fact abandoned its old Stalinist ways...
...Such an arithmetical exercise ignores political realities and is absurd...
...Still, it is only realistic to recognize that any steps the government takes in this direction will be carefully measured...
...Heartened by its success, the UDF' plans to transform itself into a permanently united and functioning parliamentary group...
...The speech he delivered in Burgundy in the closing days of the campaign, calling on the French "to make the good choice" by defeating the Left, is regarded as the best of his presidential career and as having significantly contributed to the outcome...
...Communists and Socialists, meanwhile, have been engaged in an exchange of bitter recriminations...
...In Socialist circles there is a growing consensus that it was a serious blunder for the PS to have bound itself to a Common Program, and such an error is not likely to be repeated...
...He was clearly referring to the days of the Fourth Republic when the Socialist party of the time, the SFIO, participated with bourgeois parties in one coalition government after another...
...One political scientist and Socialist sympathizer has urged the following regimen for the PS: "Reduce the unity of the Left to an electoral agreement...
...In the view of today's more ideologically inclined part y membership, the SFIO finally ended up serving the interests of the class enemy—the bourgeoisie—and losing its socialist character and identity...
...The Left's defeat marked the end of a venture in Socialist-Communist unity that formally began with the signature of their original Common Program in 1972...
...This offers the only practical Way of diminishing French discontents and—who knows...
...The second-round balloting on March 19 was thus an anticlimax...
...The Left-wing of the PS (known as ceres) is Marxist to its core It favors continued Socialist cooperation with the Communists in a rejuvenated and strengthened Union of the Left.Should the PS leaders agree to participate in a "bourgeois" government or even to collaborate in a formal way with the Giscardiens, CERES Would quit the party at once, taking along a goodly number of its followers who constitute about a quarter of the total membership...
...Most French observers believe the PCF fashioned an election strategy designed less to achieve victory than to permit it to play the role of spoiler...
...A massive monetary injection would wreck the game plan of reappointed Prime Minister Raymond Barre, who views inflation as the chief threat to the nation's economic recovery and to the prospects for stable growth...
...We know," Rocard explained, "where temptations of this kind lead to, and history has always demonstrated the impotence of the Right to bring about any kind of social transformation...
...But the failure of Giscard's effort should not detract from the merit of his intentions...
...In fact, the Center-Right parties were able to exploit the agreement as a cynical vote-getting maneuver, since it resolved none of the issues that had divided the Left in the preceding six months...
...and, second, to avoid suffering any significant decline itself...
...THE POLARIZATION Of the French people, accompanied as it has been by continuous Center-Right domination of the government throughout the life of the Fifth Republic, is manifestly both unhealthy and dangerous...
...Much more important is the fact that in obtaining a comfortable 50-seat National Assembly majority in last month's elections the Center-Right nevertheless shared the popular vote almost equally with the Left...
...The Left, the entire Left is wounded...
...nonetheless, its class-conscious approach to social dynamics precludes its entering a coalition with the Center, regardless of the terms that might be offered...
...The hardly robust French economy is operating under tight constraints, with the inflation rate hovering around 8 per cent...
...Where the Left will go from here it is much too early to say...
...And so are the millions of voters who trusted it," laments a leader of the Left Radicals in Le Monde...
...Norman Jacobs, long associated with The New Leader, now lives in Paris...
...It feeds the strains that exist between "ins" and "outs...
...For the Socialists, contrary to the predictions of earlier opinion polls, were woefully short of the votes needed to carry them, the Communists and the Left Radicals to victory in the decisive second round the following Sunday...
...two principal objectives seemingly were, first, to prevent the PS from outdistancing it in the first round by the 6-8 per cent margin the polls forecast, and thereby emerging as France's leading political party...
...Bruised...
...Define your policies in a way that meets the twofold desire of the French people for change without upheaval...
...The UDF won 140seats in the National Assembly, not far behind the Gaullists' total of 153...
...softening the rigid ideological contours of France', political landscape...
...A variety of meetings have been scheduled for the coming months to debate strategies for overcoming the current state of disarray...
...And one ma y hope that the new French government will present a legislative program containing some of the economic, social and institutional reforms the country needs...
...Uneasy acceptance of this claim made possible the creation of the Union of the Left...
...The Executive Bureau of the Socialist party (PS) has adopted a resolution blaming the Left's defeat on the "disunity deliberately fostered by the Communist party leadership...
...Observers are unanimous that he emerged as the principal winner of the elections...
...At the least, this could lead to giving members of the Left responsible posts in the National Assembly committees—posts they have been excluded from virtually since the birth of the Fifth Republic...
...Michel Rocard, one of the PS's leading figures, summed up his party's prevailing attitude toward ouverture when he made it clear that no Socialist could seriously consider anything that smacked of class collaboration...
...On the other hand, the Common Program contains some specific bread-and-butter proposals that could serve as a point of departure for fruitful discussion...
...But Giscard's ouverture policy is not primarily designed to bring about an agreed upon Left and Center-Right legislative program...
...For the present, the respective Communist and Socialist party leaders, Georges Mar-chais and Francois Mitterrand, are of course also not speaking to each other...
...Trade union demands for a sharp increase in the minimum wage, or major increases in regular wage schedules, are likely to be rejected...
...For this was perhaps the major issue over with the legislative elections were fought and the Left was defeated...
...Its political thrust, as Giscard described it, is a widening of the opposition parties' participation in the government and the National Assembly...
...In the final weeks of the contest the Center parties loyal to Giscard organized an electoral bloc, the Union for French Democracy (UDF), and campaigned under its banner...
...The party's dominant wing, led by Mitterrand, is less doctrinaire...
...Some analysts have gone so far as to speculate about the possibility of a Center-Socialist government, pointing out that the number of seats in the National Assembly held by the L'DF, Socialists and Left Radicals adds up to a majority...
...These renewed suspicions foreshadow a difficult period of adjustment in the PCF's relationship with the other parties of the Left...
...And sooner or later it could prompt some of those who repeatedly have been kept from governing to resort to direct violent action outside the workings of the system...
...Humanite, the Communist party (PCF) newspaper, denounced this as a "diversion designed to cover up the crushing responsibility of the Socialist party for the disunity among the Left...
...Yet if it was this situation above all that moved Giscard to invite the leaders of the Left to meet with him individually at the Elysee and present their views on the most urgent problems confronting France, he clearly does not intend to buy any part of the Left's Common Program, aimed at transforming the basic structure of the economy...
...So, despite Giscard's try , French politics promises to remain polarized, even if parliamentary amenities are better observed in the conduct of the National Assembly's affairs...
...POLARIZED PARTIES France's Electoral Aftermath by Norman Jacobs The French Left's dream of victory in the legislative elections vanished within seconds after the first-round balloting ended on March 12, as television stations began reporting their computer projections...
...Indeed, despite their ideological differences, the Left and Right agree that the lot of the underprivileged in France must be improved...
...Rocard's allusion to the temptations of power was not, to be sure, lost on party oldtimers...
...For years now, the PCF has claimed it is a political party "just like the others...
...Although the Communists achieved both objectives, the cost may turn out to be high...
...It is no secret that Giscard d'Estaing and Gaullist leader Jacques Chirac dislike each other intensely, and that Chirac is expected to run against Giscard for the French presidency in 1981...
...The path to success is both narrow and precipitous, but there is no other way...
...Giscard's supporters in the National Assembly also fared well...
...Tensions between Giscardiens and Gaullists undoubtedly help explain Giscard's widely heralded move toward ouverture, or an opening to the Left...
...The electorate, it was clear, had decided against entrusting its fate to the Union of the Left's bitterly quarrelling parties, and their last minute signing of a second-round withdrawal accord in favor of their highest placed first-round candidates did not affect that decision...
...Giscard himself, in his television address proposing the policy of ouverture, called upon the new government to be formed in the wake of the elections to intensify the pursuit of social justice and, in particular, to give priority to increasing the incomes of the poorest paid workers...
...Avoid too close contact with the PCF and shun any Common Program...
Vol. 61 • April 1978 • No. 9
