Playing with Posterity

...Delors' popularity does not quite equal the Prime Minister's, but he usually outdistances Chirac, who is anxious to make another bid for the presidency...

...Emmanuelli and his team have closed ranks behind the Elysee...

...This message is plainly intended for Jacques Delors, who will not throw his hat into the ring until he steps down from his post as President of the European Commission at the end of the year...

...More disturbing is his claiming not to have known about Vichy's anti-Semitic laws...

...Yet on television, to most viewers' astonishment, the President minimized his role in the initiative and implied that he had allowed himself to be convinced by then Justice Minister Robert Badinter...

...Still, he remains a force to be reckoned with: It should not be forgotten that he has always excelled at backstage intrigue...

...My conscience is at peace," he told Elkabbach...

...Although Mitterrand recently attended ceremonies in Germany and received China's President in Paris, he has reduced his public engagements considerably...

...The next presidential election, scheduled for May 1995, could take place sooner in the event of Mitterrand's death or resignation...

...indeed, quite a few civil servants used jobs in the Petain administration as a cover for their work with the Resistance, which Mitterrand joined belatedly in 1943...

...Mitterrand's commitment to keep the nation informed about the state of his health is an impressive departure from the secrecy that surrounded the terminal illness of Georges Pompidou, who died in 1974 while in office...

...After the poor Socialist showing, Rocard felt compelled to relinquish leadership of the party to Henri Emmanuelli, under whom it seems to be swinging Leftward...

...Janice Valls-Russell writes about French and Spanish affairs for the NL...

...His say in such areas as foreign policy and defense matters less and less...

...At the moment, some of Mitterrand's strongest support is from the Marxist fringe of the party, whose hostility toward Israel and sympathy for the Palestinian cause have frequently been tainted by anti-Semitism...

...Klaus Barbie was tried in 1987, but the first Frenchman, Paul Touvier, was not brought to trial until this spring...

...The party seemed in mid-September to be on the verge of splitting...

...Occasionally he stumbled over names, dates and even basic words...

...It is charged, for example, that he stabbed Michel Rocard in the back during last June's European Parliament elections, because he quietly backed a rival list led by Bernard Tapie, a maverick industrialist and erstwhile minister...

...Quite a few Socialists, too, have been left reeling, especially older people who did their part against Vichy...

...But his "painful and pathetic" television performance, as one politician described it, revealed that for all practical purposes France's president today is Balladur...

...Does he simply feel he no longer has anything to lose...

...Mitterrand told Elkabbach that he had let it be known he was in no hurry to see citizens of France tried for crimes against humanity...

...All this comes as the Socialists prepare for a national party congress in November, where they hope to agree on an electoral platform...

...Papon is accused of having rounded up Jews in southwestern France for deportation to Germany...

...he received a life sentence for executing a group of Jewish Resistants...

...Yet as potential candidates assess their own and their rivals' prospects, the President seems determined to hold center stage a little longer...

...On the other, Mitterrand's support should ensure Delors the loyalty of the party's left wing, even though it heartily dislikes him...

...Mitterrand has never been able to forgive Rocard for his relative independence within the party and his popularity without...

...In the days following the Elkabbach interview, Mitterrandists were sent forth to preach that the President is a great man who is being ruthlessly attacked because he is old and sick...

...But reconciliation, some people here say, first requires a solemn apology on the part of the French state for everything the victims of Vichy endured...

...A few days earlier Mitterrand had told ajournalist: "France cannot have two presidents...

...Much of the sympathy he might have received, however, has been swept aside by the revelations of his wartime activities in A French Youth, a book written by Pierre Pean and endorsed by the President, chronicling his formative years between 1934 and 1947...

...The mystery is why the President has suddenly chosen to speak out in this way...

...Mitterrand has given his personal nod to Delors, creating an awkward situation...

...That year Antoine Veil, husband of the distinguished politician Simone Veil, resigned as manager of a company whose board Bousquet served on after learning about his true past...

...Bousquet, also charged with crimes against humanity, would have stood trial had he not been murdered last year...

...A moderate close to Jacques Delors, the Socialists' likeliest presidential candidate, wondered whether this was not the time to launch a new Social Democratic political organization...

...And it seems he made no effort to follow the BBC broadcasts that tens of thousands of French regularly listened to beginning in June 1940...

...Several went so far as to deny many of the things millions of French had heard him say on television...

...He was right...

...On September 12, France's Socialist President, Francois Mitterrand, appeared on television to address two urgent national concerns: his worsening prostate cancer, and the new disclosures concerning his World War II involvement with the pro-Nazi Vichy regime of Marshal Philippe Petain...

...The same Mitterrand authorized a reform of French legislation so that Nazis and their collaborators could be tried even now for crimes against humanity...

...The gaunt President seemed to be playing out a morbidly introspective confession, with the experienced interviewer Jean-Pierre Elkabbach visibly uneasy at finding himself in the role of confessor...

...Proceedings have been dragging on against Maurice Papon, a senior civil servant successively under Petain, Charles de Gaulle and Valery Giscard d'Estaing...

...Confirming to Elkabbach that his cancer had worsened, he promised to step down if he becomes unable to cope...

...As if hearing Mitterrand call Bousquet "an interesting man" were not enough, they are now digesting another set of revelations...

...That he served in the Vichy government was already known...

...Most people are prepared to believe he was never anti-Semitic, despite his appearing to have taken part in an anti-Jewish demonstration before the War...

...On the one hand, Delors does not want to turn away non-Socialists who are fed up with the President...

...If the President can make them swallow his friendship with Bousquet," observed one insider, "they will swallow anything...

...Questioned about the desirability of such a gesture, Mitterrand firmly replied, "No...

...Nothing being simple, however, others on the party's left—mainly those whose priority has been the fight against "fascism," a word they may hesitate to bandy about too loosely in the future?are upset...

...It made for a striking contrast with the previous evening's interview, when Center-Right Prime Minister Edouard Balladur had competently covered a wide range of economic, social and diplomatic issues...

...Already Emmanuelli has warned that the party's candidate will have to endorse its entire program...

...Worst of all, Mitterrand continued to associate with members of the Vichy regime after 1944—notably with Rene Bousquet, head of Petain's police force and the man responsible for the mass deportations of Jews to Germany...

...For those who have long admired his impeccable command of the language, it was painful to witness...

...Or could it be, as a few have disquietingly suggested, that he is trying to initiate a subtle "rehabilitation" of Vichy...

...Indeed, besides the fulsome "indignation" currently being voiced by some who were fawning on Mitterrand not long ago, one hears a chorus of deeper-seated grievances today from other Socialists...

...But how long that remains true may depend on how much more the French are asked to swallow...

...It appears that in 1988, before the second round of presidential elections, members of the President's entourage met representatives of the far-Right National Front to curry their support against Jacques Chirac—the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic standard-bearer who ran second to Mitterrand in the first round...

...Mitterrand not only went on seeing Bousquet, he invited him to the Elysee Palace several times between 1981 and 1986...

...He did in fact speak of the need for "national reconciliation," and the memory of those years certainly is like an old scar that refuses to heal...

...Inevitably, Mitterrand's supporters in Jewish circles have been stunned...

...During the course of the interview he was seen discreetly taking medicine...

...In the first three weeks of September he gave three extensive interviews and addressed a meeting of Socialists—where he showed some of his old fire...

...A devout Catholic with Social Democratic leanings, he is in a sense Bahadur's Left-of-Center alter ego...

...His vehemence was nearly as startling as his apparent lack of remorse...

...Bousquet had been cleared by a High Court in 1949, but Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld was after him from 1978 onward...

...Anyone would think he is bent on destroying the party, that he can't bear the thought of its outliving him," one member bitterly remarked...

...Is it because he wants the controversial aspects of his career to be taken up while he is around to justify himself...