France's Uneasy Spring
ALAN, RAY
Euro Vista BY RAY ALAN France's Uneasy Spring "IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times... it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was...
...Yet France is at present an uneasy society...
...it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...
...Workers in leading export industries, and airline, railroad and postal employees, have been on strike...
...Not surprisingly, although they spend heavily on foreign travel, French people are reluctant emigrants—unlike the British, Irish and Italians, who are traditionally eager to seek a better life overseas...
...He is a smallish man, but his decision left no one of his stature in the race now...
...Almost every other day, demonstrators parade in Paris demanding more jobs, higher pay, cheaper housing, more money for schools and welfare (especially in suburbs that have large African and Arab communities), and more help for aids victims...
...Eager to demonstrate his integrity, Balladur launched a drive against corruption—and suddenly found law officials and the police asking members of his administration and the neo-Gaulhst Rally for the Republic Party (RPR) awkward questions about tax-dodging as well as undercover contributions to political funds...
...It also helped Lionel Jospin, because it put two of his Left-wing rivals out of circulation...
...His televised discussion with himself, on whether he should compete, was a lesson in democratic ethics and a gripping suspense show...
...Still, he seemed the best of the bunch for education...
...Provincial cities follow the capital's example, helped by farmers and fishermen who foul up streets with rotting vegetables, fish and burning tires...
...ex-Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, a Right-of-Center professional crowd-pleaser...
...Despite the street-pother, the extremist leaders—Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front, who hates immigrants, and the Communist Robert Hue, who has doubts about bankers—have been content mainly to spout well-honed cliches and grimace like 1920s movie villains...
...and Lionel Jospin, an austere Socialist administrator...
...Much of this agitation has, of course, been connected with this spring's presidential election (runoff: May 7...
...Chirac, demagogically inclined, was the bolder on employment...
...Inflationary promises were made by all three leading candidates: Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, a dignified liberal-conservative banker of Armenian parentage...
...Providence has rewarded them with the Continent's best food and wines, longest vacations and longest lifespan...
...Its film studios are the only ones that consistently compete with Hollywood in terms of quality, though their bottom line might make DreamWorks shudder...
...Dickens might have been describing the ambience of today's France in those lines fromi Tale of Two Cities...
...This country is the earth's second exporter of food and agricultural produce (after the United States), and its fourth economy and producer of hi-tech goods and services (after the U.S., Japan and Germany...
...The French give their children, on average, a longer general education, and spend more per head on schools, universities, the arts, public health services, and overseas aid, than other citizens of the European Union...
...They both loved France, Europe, Charles de Gaulle, women, children and the old...
...conservative economists preferred Balladur...
...Opinion polls had indicated that Delors, a social democrat who was president of the European Union until recently, would have a clear majority...
...The investigation persuaded some businessmen that Jacques Chirac was the safer bet...
...Replace de Gaulle with a shorter workweek (37 hours) and you have Jospin's platform too—weakened, though, by his party's failure to reduce unemployment when it was in power...
...It's easier to squeeze politicians before an election than after...
...Unemployment is high, partly (officialdom says) because of greater efficiency in industry and services, partly (employers say) because of the heavy payroll taxes required to finance pensions and medical services...
...In the first weeks of the campaign Balladur and Chirac, both of whom belong to the RPR, were more like Tweedledum and Tweedledee than serious political foes...
...Since Jacques Delors decided last December not to be the Socialist standard-bearer, the campaign has been mostly dull...
...Corsica indulged recently in a long strike so esoteric it even baffled Corsicans...
...It leads Europe in some new technologies connected with flight, rocketry, fast trains, and the Minitel (a huge on-line database to which most households have access...
...Both had already held senior government posts, and neither had applied the snake-oil they now said was indispensable...
Vol. 78 • March 1995 • No. 3
