Trouble Ahead for Mitterrand
BOWEN, NORMAN
FROM THE FAR RIGHT Trouble Ahead for Mitterrand BY NORMAN BCWEN Paris The results of France's election of 81 delegates to the European Parliament have changed the face of the country's politics....
...In May, for example, a modest trade surplus was registered and the inflation rate fell another fraction to 7.8 per cent...
...His efforts to reorganize industry and cut back inflation will depend on help from the unions for at least another year...
...Ironically, too, Mitterrand's gamble that Norman Bowen teaches at the American College of Arts and Sciences in Paris...
...True, there have been some signs of progress...
...And although the Socialists have an overall majority in the National Assembly, making it possible for them to govern alone if need be, they have mortgaged their future on the still questionable outcome of the austerity measures...
...Nonetheless, Chirac has ruled out a national alliance with Le Pen...
...The Socialists could then try to form a Left majority by drawing together a number of lesser Leftist parties...
...Leaving the seat of power would at least restore the PCF to its position of serving as the vehicle for expressing the hostility of many non-Communists opposed to government policies and even to the Fifth Republic...
...It should be stressed, too, that a record 43 per cent of the electorate abstained, and a majority of those who stayed home were on the Left...
...Their votes went to the big winner in the election: Jean-Marie Le Pen's extremist National Front...
...Some of Mitterrand's supporters would not be unhappy to see the Communists go...
...The consensus here is that this latest erosion of public approval will oblige Mitterrand to replace Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy...
...On the darker side, rising unemployment that could reach 11 per cent by 1985 threatens to stir up working-class disaffection and fuel the far Right's racism...
...At the moment, the National Front is a bigger danger to the neo-Gaullists than to the Giscardians...
...It cannot claim a national majority without his votes...
...Indeed, the left wing of the Socialist Party has been urging a more interventionist economic policy, and there is some validity to charges that French industrialists have been less than fully cooperative in the effort to revive the business climate...
...He could attempt to turn theFront's challenge to his advantage by promoting a sort of Rightist Mitterrandism— courting the moderates with the argument that only he would be able to lure Le Pen's new following back to the fold...
...He attacked immigrant workers as the source of the country's economic woes, and he called for an authoritarian state to fight Bolshevism and to preserve traditional values...
...Some want to stay in the coalition and try to play a constructive role...
...Citing their inability to capture 5 per cent of the vote in several parts of the country, Socialist Party chief Lionel Jospin argues that they are no longer a national force...
...and simply having to confront the reality that at the polls the Left fared worst in the regions hit hardest by austerity...
...But inflation is being held down artificially...
...In the wake of the first nationwide balloting since it put Francois Mitterrand into the Elysee Palace three years ago, the Socialist-Communist alliance can speak for barely a third of those who voted, or little more than 40 per cent if the smaller Left parties are included...
...In that event, Mitterrand would be hard pressed not to radicalize his regime...
...Most ominously, French exports have on the whole been stagnant, and without a large increase in foreign earnings to payback the debts incurred since 1981, the entire economic program will collapse...
...Certainly participation in the government has failed to legitimate the Communists in the eyes of public opinion: Their uncritical acceptance of Soviet foreign policy and maintenance of a rigid internal structure have kept the party's old Stalinist image in focus...
...This might now give the far Right a substantial number of seats, thereby depriving the moderate Right of an absolute majority...
...Then the naming of a moderate Socialist to the prime ministership—say, Michel Rocard or Jacques Delors—might retrieve some of the centrist support that gave Mitterrand the presidency in 1981...
...Mitterrand could move fairly quickly to counteract the general sense of the Left's weakness, but that would confirm the opposition's claim that the electorate has repudiated him...
...Actually, the Socialist Party (PS) almost matched its showing in the 1979 European elections, taking 21 per cent of the vote...
...His government has an increasingly narrow base for maintaining the present austerity, let alone introducing the industrial restructuring, controlled wages and prices, and budgetary constraints intended to reduce inflation...
...if the Communists went into opposition, he would probably have to face far greater worker militancy in the industrial sector as well as the Civil Service...
...The sharp drop confirmed the PCF's steady decline, already apparent in '81 when it pulled 15 per cent of the vote after linking arms with the PS, which got 26 per cent...
...At present, members of the National Assembly are chosen through two rounds of voting in geographical districts, and the runoff between the first round's highest vote-getters virtually eliminates small parties from contention...
...others demand an immediate break with the Socialists...
...Veteran Communist boss Georges Marchais has been silent since the newest blow, feeding speculation that he will be ousted...
...A less symbolic contest might have produced somewhat different results...
...at the same time, joining forces with the far Right would push many moderates back to the Left...
...As matters stand, the second group would seem to have the stronger case...
...Le Pen ran a strongly nationalistic campaign...
...stepped up protectionism and high interest rates in the United States...
...Moreover, a new government without a visible change in policy would not fool anyone...
...Whatever his fate, a struggle has erupted among the party's leaders...
...Mauroy, on the other hand, has been conciliatory...
...For the National Front, the Jewish Madame Veil was nearly as reprehensible as the PCF...
...Thus President Mitterrand's vital economic reforms have been placed in jeopardy, and the moderate Right's strategy has been challenged with legislative elections just two years away...
...Other factors that could tilt the balance toward radicalization include the failure of the European Community to solve its present crisis...
...Its coalition partner, the Communist Party (PCF), plummeted to 11 per cent, however, from 20 per cent in '79...
...alignment with the Communists would marginalize them and open the way for Socialist expansion toward the center has blocked any chance of insurgents inside the PCF pushing for reform...
...Even so, the opposition would still be ahead...
...only when industrial prices are freed—perhaps by the end of the year—will the real test come...
...In 1981, the Left promised to introduce at least partial proportional representation...
...Then again, the way for Le Pen's success was paved at the local level during the 1983 municipal elections, when many garden-variety conservatives willingly ran together with far Right candidates and emphasized such issues as immigration and crime...
...the anger and frustration are very real...
...The timing of Mauroy's departure remains a subject of debate...
...The opposition's victory, meanwhile, has been overshadowed by the remarkable resurgence of the Far Right...
...Furthermore, since the European Assembly is widely viewed as powerless, those who did come out could freely express their anger and frustration...
...In fact, the Front's 10.5 per cent of the vote came both from the Left and the Right...
...He may therefore let the unpopular Mauroy continue to absorb the public's hostility until the hoped for positive effects of the current economic program seem assured...
...For instance, a poll conducted after the vote indicated that in a national election, the Socialists' share of the vote would increase to 25 per cent, while the National Front's total would drop to 5 per cent...
...Critics have suggested that the single list was a mistake, because very Right-wing neo-Gaullists rejected Veil, who as a minister under Giscard introduced the law legalizing abortion in France...
...If they persist, Mitterrand could seek to undermine the Right by altering the electoral system prior to 1986...
...But such a course would also effectively transform the Fifth Republic—whose institutions were designed to prevent exactly this kind of fragmentation—from a strong presidential system into a weak parliamentary one...
...Yet despite its winning 43 per cent of the vote, the opposition did not equal its '79 performance, nor could it at this point muster a credible governing majority...
...The moderate Right must now find some resolution to the dilemma posed by the emergence of Le Pen...
...Of course, the numerical victors in the European contest— Jacques Chirac's neo-Gaull-ist Rally for the Republic Party and the Union for French Democracy coalition of former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, joined in a single list headed by Simone Veil—insist that the Left has lost its popular mandate...
...Much of this vote has turned to the authoritarian Right, and together with losses reflecting the shrinkage of industrial jobs in France largely explains the PCF's latest plunge...
Vol. 67 • June 1984 • No. 11
