France's New Political Landscape

...The situation is not without its ironies, though...

...Still others feared an outcry at the attempt to jiggle the rules of the game just a year before the forthcoming national ballot...

...In these circumstances, the Kanaks feel, they have little to lose by refusing to bend at all...

...Others were committed to the two-round system...

...Consequently, both camps can be said to have contributed to the far Right's revival...

...The National Assembly's makeup would be altered profoundly...

...Le Pen's explicitly anti-immigrant and authoritarian platform are anathema to a large majority of Frenchmen, but a quarter of them admit to sharing at least a few of his ideas on foreigners and crime...

...He has in various cases resisted the pressures of President Reagan...

...Furthermore a sharp increase in racist incidents has accompanied the surge: Verbal abuse directed at minorities has risen noticeably, and alleged members of the Front have participated in racially motivated shootings...

...Mitterrand's scheme would abolish existing Assembly districts and establish full proportionality at the department level...

...In a similar spirit, Education Minister Jean-Pierre Chevenement has attempted to recapture the school issue...

...The neo-Gaullists are strongly hostile to proportionality on grounds that it would alter the structure of the Fifth Republic...

...But smaller centrist groups might be tempted to participate in a Center-Left arrangement anyway...

...If the PS cannot retain its Assembly majority in '86, he reasons, it still should emerge with the largest block of deputies...

...But that has its price...

...Representation would become a bit more indirect, but French parliamentarians are often recruited outside the districts that elect them and seldom pretend to champion local interests in the American style...

...Critics fear it would usher in a period of unstable centrist coalitions resembling those of the Fourth Republic, when France last had PR...

...It continues at 10 per cent, a human tragedy that has produced a class called the "new poor...

...The Communists approve the innovation, albeit with reservations...

...In the last few months they have suffered numerous casualties, including the killing of their most militant leader by the police...

...At present, districts have as few as 40,000 or as many as 300,000...

...Concern over public opinion, it should be noted, is in fashion again...

...In the process, the President's ability to maneuver would increase considerably...

...Except for the Caledonian crisis, Mitterrand's handling of foreign policy will on the whole stand him in good stead in '86...

...The present system tends to result in coalitions forming around the strongest second-round candidates, giving the dominant party in each camp a considerable advantage...

...For the Socialists will also be less creative, reluctant to propose alternative visions, and hence are unlikely to ignite the French imagination...

...His whole program promoting "republican 61itism" reinforces the centralizing tendencies of the state, and is not unrelated to his 1988 Presidential ambitions...

...After the Paris daily Liberation renewed old charges that Le Pen had tortured prisoners in the Algerian War, he was cheered in some quarters...

...By fragmenting the Right, the President hopes to make the Socialists the inevitable heart of any centrist coalition...

...An extreme Right group also claimed to have set off a bomb at arecent Jewish film festival in Paris...

...The PS has been struggling to improve its image, reversing old policies and bringing in new faces...

...They felt it served them well in 1981 and could do so again if Socialist fortunes improve...

...What has caused the strongest far Right resurgence in France since the Poujade movement of the 1950s...

...In general, Opposition leaders have adopted a two-pronged approach to neutralizing the Front's appeal: While rejecting overtures to form a national alliance, they have actively courted the Front's sympathizers...

...the National Front would benefit at the expense of the moderates...

...They are against granting independence but believe the Kanaks will attain their goal within a decade...

...Wary of being boxed in, the RPR and the UDF have signed a pact excluding future coalitions with the Socialists, and are organizing a campaign to block theAssemblyvoteontheproposed changes...

...Somehow Mitterrand must find a solution acceptable to the native Kanaks, who insist on independence, and to the caldoches, the European Caledonians, who won recent territorial elections and vehemently oppose it...

...In pursuit of an elusive centrist majority the Socialists will no doubt try to "prime the pump.' Notwithstanding Fabius' promises to stay the course of austerity, measures to combat joblessness are virtually unavoidable—and could be the most effective way of diminishing Le Pen's influence among Leftist voters...

...Chevtaement' s pedagogic conservatism, shocking to those teachers who dreamed of the progressive reforms promised in 1981, is designed to reassert the importance of the profession practiced by the Socialists' primary constituency...

...A study of the regional returns did show that the Front fares better in areas with serious unemployment and large numbers of foreign-born residents...

...on the contrary, their sole chance of getting what they want soon depends on pressing the Socialists as hard as possible because nothing can be expected from the Right should it win in 1986...

...Indeed, he believes that unsavory as the Front may be, it should have representation...

...After the settlement of the private school controversy he went on the offensive, demanding a renewed commitment to basic skills, discipline, homework, civics—plus the teaching and singing of the Marseillaise...

...The Communists held steady at nearly 13 per cent, halting a string of embarrassing declines (although they are nowhere near the 22 per cent they received in the 1979 cantonales...

...District gerrymandering would be eliminated and population imbalances corrected by the addition of 97 seats, so that each deputy would represent 100,000 inhabitants...

...He wants them to be more competitive and selective...

...Conventional conservatives blame the Socialists, tying the phenomenon especially to difficult economic conditions, no-tablyjoblessness...

...For them, the argument that all previous changes have been made on short notice did not offset the danger of damaging the party's reputation...

...Having won nearly 27 per cent of the vote, the Socialists gained four percentage points on their showing in 1984's European Parliament elections and remain the nation's largest party...

...And the Right has consistently demanded stricter immigration barriers, pointing to rising unemployment...

...The respectable Right would have only a slim majority without extremist backing...

...It has led as well to the formation of antiracist groups that include prominent intellectuals and entertainers who had distanced themselves from liberal battles...

...Former President Val-ery Giscard d' Estaing came out in favor of modified proportionality when it would have aided his UDF...

...The threat posed by the authoritarian Right has mobilized the Left more than any other current issue...

...Together the RPR and the UDF would capture 43 per cent, leaving control out of reach unless they turned to Le Pen or the Socialists...

...Still, there were many local coalitions involving the far Right, and controversy over the issue caused deep rifts in the RPR and the UDF...

...A referendum has been scheduled, but since an aggressive Gaullist-inspired European settiement program in the 1960s made the Kanaks a minority, the government's independence option is unlikely to pass...

...Clearly elected majorities would disappear, along with the present Left-Right polarization...

...Moreover, the bitterness caused by years of discrimination that earlier divided Caledonians has lately been exacerbated by shootings and farm burnings on both sides...

...His suggestion that Saturday morning classes might be abandoned in favor of school on Wednesday has parents cheering and Catholic leaders worrying that as a consequence attendance at midweek catechism sessions will fall...

...Defenders of the strategy insist it is no worse than the Socialist-Communist alliance that broke down last year...

...The effort is paying off: Fabius' approval ratings are substantially above 50 per cent...

...Perhaps most important f or the Left was the success in making National Front boss Jean-Marie Le Pen an effective campaign issue...

...Opposition chiefs have categorically rejected such an alliance and refused to order their candidates to stand down in the Front's favor this year...

...And his strategy in Chad, ridiculed when French troops were withdrawn, has achieved its purpose: No less a skeptic than U.S...

...The stock market has been posting all-time highs...

...Reform was at an impasse: Teachers had resisted earlier innovative prescriptions that were not accompanied by money and better working conditions...

...The Socialist (PS) and Communist (PCF) parties thus avoided an utter rout, yet by the end of the next round the Right controlled 71 departments to the Left's 29 and seemed well-positioned to recapture the government it lost to President Francois Mitterrand in 1981...

...THE FAR RIGHT AND PROPORTIONALITY France's New Political Landscape BY NORMAN BOWEN Paris The elections for half of France's departmental legislatures, held the second and third Sundays in March, may prove to have been a significant political turning point when the country chooses a new National Assembly in 1986...

...The creation of temporary public-service jobs for young people has already been received favorably, in spite of their obviously stopgap nature...

...Tellingly, the reaction to PR is not related to ideology...

...Besides, officials observe, Social Security costs and the crime rate among immigrants are no higher than for native-born Frenchmen in the same age and socioeconomic categories...

...But exit polls questioning voters on their choices in the event of a national contest showed the PS getting approximately 30 per cent of the total vote and the Front 9 per cent...

...Sales abroad were up in 1984, and growth should continue in several sectors, especially agriculture...

...It helps, of course, that the economic tidings have been mostly positive of late...

...At the same time, proportionality seems to run counter to the Socialist objective of decentralizing French politics...

...Now that it would aid the Front and the PS Giscard is opposed...

...With roughly 50 per cent of the total vote, however, the Right, including the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR), the Union for French Democracy (UDF), and smaller groups, might have to consider embracing the extremist National Front (9 per cent) to muster an Assembly majority...

...The government has advanced an "independence-association" plan that would ostensibly hand over sovereignty to the islanders yet protect French economic and strategic interests...

...So has Industry Minister Edith Cresson's announcement of steps to liberalize the economy, particularly the lifting of price controls in such sectors as automobiles...

...security too, and made local compacts that helped send extremists to many town councils...

...Prime Minister Laurent Fabius defends proportionality as enhancing democracy, because it would allow the entire range of political opinion national representation...

...Before Mitterrand stepped in to arbitrate, the Socialists themselves were hardly united on the issue...

...He has engineered the entry of Spain and Portugal into the Common Market despite protests from farmers...

...Mitterrand, too, has steadily gained in recent polls—his admirers (43 per cent) almost match his detractors (45 per cent...

...The Minister firmly approves the meritocratic aims of the public schools, but opposes their leveling effects...

...It brought out the Socialist and Communist voters...

...Leaving aside practical political considerations, anything less would today be very hard for the Kanaks to swallow...

...In metropolitan France most people are fatalistic about the future of the island...

...Many people have turned to Le Pen out of frustration with Mitterrand's performance on the one hand, and with the moderate Right's failure to put forward any clear program for fear of offending antiracist segments of its constituency on the other...

...Agriculture Minister Michel Rocard, by contrast, resigned to protest the suggested change...

...Debate about the extremists' ultimate impact has now shifted from the streets to the National Assembly, since Mitterrand has decided to push ahead plans to introduce proportional representation (PR) in the 1986 legislative elections...

...In fact, Chad's warring factions may actually agree to negotiations for a national reconciliation...

...Unemployment is the dark spot...

...Ambassador Even Galbraith has admitted that Libya has been stopped...

...Win or lose in 1986, the party will emerge with greater "maturity'' and be better prepared to govern...

...Proportionality favors relatively small parties...

...No less vehemently, the Left charges that the RPR and the UDF are legitimizing racist political themes: The National Front first attained prominence in the 1983 municipal contests, when the respectable Right harped on immigration and Norman Bowen teaches political science at the A merican College in Paris...

...Le Point magazine's simulated legislative election returns, based on the outcome of the cantonales, produced the following results: Under the old system the Communists would have 13 seats, the Socialists 128 andtheRPR/UDF333...

...And the dollar's anticipated decline should spur investment, luring capital back to the Continent...

...One counterproposal would give each of New Caledonia's communities a separate zone...

...In addition, the PS is accused of overdramatizing the specter of Le Pen to discredit the entire Right...

...The franc has remained relatively solid...

...In the first round of balloting the Right as a whole took 58 percent of the turnout, theLeft41 per cent...

...In sum, Socialist economic, industrial, educational, and diplomatic policies may seem opportunistic...

...Mitterrand's government, denying that the newcomers sap the economy, says they take jobs the French have refused and cites the growing unemployment in European countries that let few outsiders in...

...Instead of selecting individual deputies, the electorate would choose among partisan lists in a single round of voting, which should discourage both Left and Right alliances...

...Selling minority interests in some profitable public-sector areas (chemicals, glass, electronics) would raise badly needed revenues and defuse one of the last economic issues sharply distinguishing the Left from the Right...

...proportionality would give the Communists 31 seats, the Socialists 158, the ecologists 23, the RPR/UDF265, andtheNation-alFront42...

...At the moment the Socialists' main image problem is the South Pacific island of New Caledonia...

...National Secretary Lionel Jospin, discounting accusations that the government would bear the moral burden of bringing the extreme Right into the Legislature, supported the experiment...

...Yet they represent a thoroughgoing reassessment of traditional attitudes, an attempt to slough off naive and contradictory goals...

...She has even sent up a trial balloon to test reactions to partially denationalizing several state-owned enterprises...

...Compromise has been difficult: The settlers, being aligned with the RPR, are unwilling to give an inch at a point where it appears the Right may be returned to office...

...But ultimately Mitterrand managed to persuade the Socialists that proportionality offers the sole chance they—and probably Mitterrand himself—have of remaining in power beyond 1986...

...For example, Jacques Chirac, the RPR mayor of Paris, has warned that in a few decades the rapidly multiplying peoples of Africa might overrun a depopulated Europe...