Shaking Up the French Socialists

VALLS-RUSSELL, JANICE

BEREGOVOY'S CHALLENGE Shaking Up the French Socialists BY JANICE VALLS-RUSSELL Paris It takes a good electoral trouncing to make parties sit up. France's Socialists expected a setback in the...

...The worst blow to the Socialists' moral status came last autumn, when it was revealed that in the mid-1980s health authorities knowingly allowed hemophiliacs to receive transfusions of HIV-contaminated blood...
...Many had feared that Mitterrand would try to introduce proportional representation in hopes of checking his party's slide...
...A few months later, Dufoix came under attack again...
...And Delors has another valuable asset: The quiet, determined, highly respected Minister of Labor, Martine Aubry, happens to be his daughter...
...His vigorous efforts earned him international respect, while Communists and Left-wingers in his own party nicknamed him "Old Man Austerity...
...Remembering those who had supported the far-Right National Front (13.9 per cent), he expressed a deep concern about illegal immigration and the decline of law and order as well, but insisted he would not tolerate "the moral leprosy" of xenophobia...
...Beregovoy also undertook to tackle unemployment, the main worry of the French voters according to recent opinion polls...
...Her commonsense approach to unemployment was shared by her Labor Minister, Martine Aubry, who is staying on with Beregovoy...
...Cresson was not, of course, at fault in the affair, but her professed outrage was unpersuasive...
...In seeking to win back the voters who defected over urban insecurity and immigration issues, Beregovoy noted that the elderly and the poor are the main victims of crime, and pledged to ensure greater safety on the streets...
...Janice Vails-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...
...To many television viewers, Cresson's cold, at times sardonic, smile reflected what they saw as a remote, unfeeling Administration...
...She blames her downfall on the Socialist Party's leader, Laurent Fabius, and the Elysee's "gang of arrivistes and wheeler-dealers...
...Once the secret leaked out, she took the blame and resigned, and two senior civil servants were sacked...
...Incidents of this kind obscured Cresson's achievements...
...From 1984 to 1986, and from 1988 onward, he concentrated on purging Socialist economic excesses, lowering inflation and reducing the nation's deficits...
...The Minister of Social Services at the time, Georgina Du-foix, clumsily admitted that she felt "responsible but not guilty...
...Ultimately, his success may well depend on hers...
...During the election campaign she shrilly attacked the National Front and its leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen...
...Time will tell whether pink and green really harmonize...
...Their meager 16 per cent share of the vote (18.9 per cent if their Center-Left allies, the radicaux, are included) had the Center-Right opposition (38 per cent) already anticipating victory in next year's general election...
...Her physical elegance and privileged social background (she was brought up among the chic Paris bourgeoisie and had an English-speaking nanny) contrasted unsettlingly with her tactless, occasionally crude barbs...
...Backers of the two rival Green parties (14.4 per cent total) were assured that the environmental consequences of all economic decisions would be studied, and that France would suspend its nuclear testing in the Pacific for one year pending international negotiations on disarmament...
...At present, only 12 per cent of the labor force is employed part-time, compared to 20 per cent in Britain and Germany...
...it was time for him to go...
...On March 30 he pre-empted any plans to name him Prime Minister by letting it be known that he wished to stay on in Brussels until his mandate expires in December...
...Fellow Socialists felt she was going too far when she proclaimed that were she not Prime Minister, she would join the street demonstrations against the extremists...
...To the press she declared, "I told the President, but he wouldn't listen...
...Since the election he has spoken out for "ecodevelopment," an environmental approach to economic growth...
...Beregovoy's unruffled nature is certainly a change from that of his predecessor, Edith Cresson...
...On April 2, however, he pulled a new Prime Minister out of his hat: Pierre Beregovoy, a mild-mannered former gas fitter who worked his way up without losing his modesty...
...Meanwhile it is worth observing that the president of the Nord-Pas de Calais industrial region, Marie-Christine Blandin, was elected with Socialist backing and is a Green...
...Though growing numbers of jobless and homeless are evident in the subways and streets of Paris and other large cities, some French consider the country's Social Security system overgenerous...
...More seriously, Centrists criticized her sectarian approach to politics and her penchant for economic dirigisme...
...So far, the President of the European Commission is playing coy...
...This would enable him to step down before next May and would strengthen the Socialists' position in the consequent Presidential election, particularly if Beregovoy does not falter...
...Beregovoy even touched on the emancipation of immigrant women, declaring that polygamy is unacceptable...
...His inaugural address to Parliament showed a readiness to heed the electoral ides of March...
...The role of the Greens in relation to the Socialists should not be minimized either...
...A spokesman for the federation of shopkeepers and small businesses has observed that there are a lot of "phony unemployed," individuals receiving government benefits while working off the books...
...It is a challenge to the rampant hypocrisy of those Leftists who cry racism whenever a French teenager beats up an Arab schoolmate, but who look away when the reverse occurs...
...As a result, some 5,000 of them contracted aids...
...The two women tried to revamp vocational training, introduced tax rebates for those employing domestic help, and created fiscal incentives for employers to hire students on leave, trainees and disabled workers...
...Restaurant owners seeking to hire waitresses complain that applicants sent by the unemployment agency often arrive saying they would prefer to stay on the dole...
...Yet along with rights, he cautioned, newcomers have duties: No subversion of France's republican values will be tolerated, especially of its secular principles...
...Polls taken in late March suggest that the party could retain control of the Elysee Palace if its candidate were Jacques Delors...
...Her problem was primarily one of style, or the lack of it?a shortcoming that destroyed the credit she had last May upon being named France's first female Prime Minister...
...This was an implicit warning to Muslims, who periodically try to send their daughters to school wearing religious headdresses...
...Mitterrand's changing the government does not entirely rule out his early exit...
...Neo-Gaullist leader Jacques Chirac publicly condemned the ban on nuclear tests, but in private Center-Right figures welcomed the measure, described the Prime Minister as "pragmatic" and "honest," and praised his conciliatory manner...
...A member of the Socialist Party's influential Catholic minority, Delors has ties with the Center and with the reformist branch of the neo-Gaullists...
...He also said that he would fight illegal immigration "firmly," and that he would attempt to accelerate the integration of legal immigrants...
...The French are unused to such language from politicians...
...The Prime Minister has announced tax breaks for firms offering part-time work, too...
...Beregovoy hopes to provide France's 90,000 long-term unemployed (one-third of the total) with training courses and community service jobs, such as caring for the elderly or disabled, performing maintenance work in depressed suburbs, and clearing footpaths in rural areas...
...Nevertheless, the public remained convinced that at least two Cabinet ministers claiming to know nothing about Habash's visit were lying...
...Soon after his appointment, though, France discovered a different Beregovoy...
...That makes him the kind of man around whom an alliance of Social Democrats, Centrists and pale Greens might coalesce...
...He has hinted that he favors reducing the Presidential term from seven to five years...
...Besides quipping that he had only 11 months to succeed after 11 years of "failed Mitterrandism," the opposition was hard put to find much to say against Beregovoy...
...France's Socialists expected a setback in the March 22 regional balloting, but they were stunned by the drubbing they suffered...
...As director of the Red Cross she helped arrange the stay of Palestinian terrorist George Habash in a French hospital...
...The Prime Minister's bluntness is not only refreshing...
...Francois Mitterrand, said cruel voices—some belonging to Socialists—was an aging President who had lost his touch...
...The Socialists, he further promised, would not tamper with the voting system...
...Perhaps these reforms simply were too recent for Cresson to reap any rewards...
...For several months prior to the March balloting, Fabius sang the praises of their causes...
...Beregovoy was a tough Finance Minister...
...Cresson's forthrightness has not deserted her...
...Everyone thought they knew him...
...they accept it only from the few naturally disposed to it, like Minister for Urban Affairs Bernard Tapie, a pugnacious businessman and the manager of a professional soccer team...
...He vowed to fight political corruption "wherever it may lurk" and to restore a sense of ethics in public affairs...

Vol. 75 • April 1992 • No. 5


 
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