Trouble on the Right in France
PAINTON, PATRICIA H.
REVOLT OF THE YOUNG TURKS Trouble On the Right in France By Patricia H. Painton Paris In just one year the conservative parties of France have been brought up short by a string of four...
...The more extreme elements will probably coalesce in the RPR, bringing with them the fugitives from the National Front...
...REVOLT OF THE YOUNG TURKS Trouble On the Right in France By Patricia H. Painton Paris In just one year the conservative parties of France have been brought up short by a string of four defeats at the polls...
...Personal rivalries and ideological incoherence hurt the Right at every level—including the middle spectrum, traditionally its rich preserve...
...At issue is a deal between the former President and Chirac to field a unified list of candidates in June, headed by Giscard and conspicuous for its lack of centrists...
...Unruffled, the Right regarded the Socialist leadership of France as a one-shot aberration...
...As support for the Socialists eroded, the Right became convinced that the élan of the Left was spent...
...Itis the UDFthat pushed for a single ticket, contending that this would balance the dominant RPR, promote the idea of union and therefore appeal to some who re-elected Mitterrand...
...Yet they do not need to look far for explanations...
...Many ran and won against the "hardening arteries,' as one paper described the long-entrenched local barons of the CenterRight...
...With the next test coming June 18 in elections for the European Parliament, the Right has been desperately searching for a strategy that will reverse its fortunes...
...As one astute observer put it: "Giscard thinks he's essential...
...Their power was broken for the first time eight years ago by Mitterrand, who won the presidency and swept his party to an unprecedented absolute majority in the National Assembly...
...To counter this, Chirac in his drive for the presidency initially espoused such Reaganesque policies as deregulation, privatization, and a shrinking role for the state...
...The conservatives finally retreated...
...The electorate is impatient for new faces...
...The "dirty dozen" are the first products of the decentralization of power that began in the past decade...
...Until now, the "myth of unity" has hypnotized the Right...
...Appearances, it should be noted, are deceptive here: France has clearly not converted to socialism, not even to President François Mitterrand's social democratic brand...
...Noir and company, meanwhile, are looking toward the next national test...
...In their view, the voters there have to be attracted to a broadly based alliance that embraces not merely Gaullists but moderates from the entire Right...
...Nor does a second group that has broken away from the UDF and is actually fielding its own slate, led by European Parliament ex-President Simone Veil, one of the most popular political figures in France...
...Their most recent poor showing, in the March municipal elections, has precipitated a crisis of identity on the Right...
...The Socialists have coopted much of its old ideological territory at the center...
...Hence they proposed more moderates for the June list than was acceptable to Chirac and Giscard—whose choices, sure enough, have displeased the center...
...As head of the joint ticket, Giscard would be well positioned to become " President of Europe, " should there be such a job in the European Community after 1992...
...It is already 15 y ears since he became the youngest President of France at age 48, yet he shows no signs of stepping aside, even though his popularity ratings continue to be embarrassingly low...
...Its model has been the Socialist Party, where Mitterrand has successfully brought quarreling factions together by making room for differing ideological currents...
...To meet the competition, French industry will continue to require the buttressing provided by the government...
...Chirac is boss of the largest group on the Right, the well-oiled Gaullist Rally for the Republic (RPR...
...Chirac is only 56 years old, but he is too familiar...
...In polls taken prior to the Young Turks' wise decision to back down from a destructive battle they couldn't win, 53 per cent of all conservative voters said Chirac should give way to a younger figure...
...Pasqua argues that the party needs to stress its nationalist roots to coax voters away from Jean-Marie Le Pen and his extreme Right National Front...
...This was Chirac's payoff to Giscard for keeping his unhappiness with the Gaullist presidential candidate under wraps during last year's campaign...
...The June balloting will be the last chance to take France's political temperature before the 1993 legislative contest, and will determine how that crucial battle is fought...
...The rebellion is being led by Michel Noir, 40, a darkly handsome Gaullist who defeated the aging Mayor of Lyons, France'sthird largest city...
...Although Mitterrand won a second term handily in 1988, his personal popularity could not pull his party to a clear victory in the Assembly...
...Its traditionalist wing is led by Charles Pasqua, a close Chirac adviser and the former Interior Minister...
...These self-styled centrists, guided by Deputy Pierre Méhaignerie, are markedly to the left of the Young Turks, adding to the present confusion of the conservative scene...
...Their cities and regions are thriving...
...Whatever the eventual lineup, the old guard will ignore the reformers at its peril...
...A consummate politician, he has rarely allowed his ambition to be deflected by Socialist goals, and has recognized that none of his strategies could work unless he had the party's apparatus firmly in hand...
...Under de Gaulle the party had a populist appeal, but it has grown more conservative with the years...
...And, indeed, from 1982 on the voters backed conservatives by more than 50 per cent in the first round of all elections...
...The Right itself is ambivalent about upsetting France's tradition of state intervention in industry...
...They know that given the changing political landscape it will be won at the center...
...The PR has been part of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), aloose alliance of small, more liberal parties of the Center-Right...
...That would dismantle the country's long-established entitlement programs and cut back its generous health care and retirement plans...
...The conservatives have dominated French politics since 1958, when Charles de Gaulle was called back to lead the country out of its Algerian entanglement...
...The quid pro quo, however, smacks of precisely the sort of old-guard arrangement the Young Turks oppose...
...That does not seem to have registered with Giscard...
...In fact he's a nuisance.' Patricia H. Painton, a new contributor to The New Leader, is a freelance journalist currently living in France...
...The Young Turks have no immediate chance for similar control...
...The 12object to Giscard at thetop because they feel he embodies the very characteristics of the Right-wing leadership that produced the recent electoral defeats: complacency, condescension, and speeches heavy with hypocrisy...
...Anothermember of what has been dubbed the "dirty dozen" is the young Center-Right Mayor of Toulouse, Dominique Baudis, who has exhorted Giscard to "pass on the torch...
...Chirac and Giscard have been reluctant to admit greater democracy to internal party processes, or to accept the need for redefining platforms and ideology...
...The UDF has been resolutely pro-Europe, and some of its leaders see this commitment as a bridge to future agreements with the Socialists...
...A realignment of the Right seems almost inevitable, perhaps before 1993...
...There are 12 of them, mostly Gaullists in their 40s, and their claim to insubordination is their striking success last March...
...The rebel opposition also pits the provinces against Paris...
...He is unlikely to get better than 6-7 per cent of the vote on June 18...
...Business, for its part, is worried about the "borderless" European Community, scheduled to become a reality in 1992...
...Yet despite evidence that the current buoyant economy has benefited to some degree from increased economic freedom, the French are not comfortable with the idea of true laissez faire...
...Moderate forces can be expected to rally around the UDF, which is ideologically related to Christian Democratic movements in other countries on the Continent...
...But the basic problem of the Right at the moment is the need to re-examine what it stands for...
...In 1986 the Socialists lost control of the legislature, forcing Mitterrand to "cohabit" uneasily for two years with the neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac as his Prime Minister...
...In recent years, the government has successfully forced restructuring on certain rust-belt sectors and pushed for a number of industrially coherent mergers...
...Though the rebels have risen to national prominence through regular party channels, they are used to running the show on their own home ground—and do so effectively...
...The Right, though, has no Mitterrand...
...His is still the biggest party, but the French electorate that overwhelmingly selected the Socialists in 1981 had been gradually returning to its voting patterns of the last 30 years...
...Le Pen's racist rabble-rousing is gradually losing its appeal to the petit bourgeoisie and the unemployed...
...The latest symptom of the crisis has come in a challenge to the old-guard leadership by a group of renovateurs, or Young Turks...
...Thus the subsequent setbacks shocked leaders like former President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and Chirac, now Mayorof Paris...
...Legislation in the early 1980s gave considerable new decision-making authority to urban and regional councils and brought new blood to local leadership...
...Giscard runs the Republican Party (PR), a small conservative organization that appeals to propertied "notables...
Vol. 72 • May 1989 • No. 8
