Would-Be's Parade

FRANCE Would-Be's Parade

The politicians who govern France gathered in the National Assembly last week to perform the familiar French rite of political execution. The appointed victim this time was Premier Antoine Pinay, who in nine months and two weeks had given France its most stable economy since the war (TIME, Dec. 22).

The followers of General de Gaulle greased the wheels of the tumbrel--they served notice that they would throw their votes against Pinay, instead of abstaining as has been their practice. The Catholic M.R.P., whose 88 deputies are Pinay's chief source of numerical strength, decided to drop the guillotine knife--they withdrew support from the Premier. All that remained was for Antoine Pinay to lay his neck on the block.

More & Less. But the Premier chose to deprive the deputies of their sport. At first he tried to talk his way past the approaching votes of confidence, as he had so often before. The argument was, as usual, the budget. "What are my opponents asking?" said he acidly. "At one and the same time they want more revenue and less taxation, more spending and less deficit, more reforms and less change." Downfall of his government, he warned, would lead to panic, "and from panic to speculation, and from speculation to collapse of the Treasury." His hearers were unmoved.

Shortly after midnight, Pinay stepped to the rostrum and snapped, "I now ask the Assembly to note that it is impossible for the government to continue its task . . ." In the stunned silence, the Premier stalked out. It was all very unusual, to quit before being thrown out. Next day Pinay announced: "I'll never go back to that bear cage again." The black-market rate of the franc, which had fallen from 480 to a low of 390 during Pinay's save-the-franc administration, began climbing, and reached 420 only two days after his downfall. That familiar word, devaluation, was heard again in a land where the cost of living has jumped 45% since 1948 (the U.S. increase in the same period: 12%).

Old Faces. After Pinay's fall, the traditional parade of would-be Premiers and ministers began. But this time something new was added. For six years Charles de Gaulle had refused tt> participate in any French government, holding out for a new constitution. Now he agreed to let his office-hungry followers participate in a new cabinet to keep more of them from breaking away, as did some 30 last summer to support Conservative Pinay. Aloof and disdainful, the general stayed away from Paris, while one of his most ambitious lieutenants, a young (40) anthropologist named Jacques Soustelle, accepted the President's invitation to try to form a cabinet. He failed. Next came ex-Premier (1946-50) Georges Bidault of the M.R.P., whose chances seemed little better than Soustelle's.

The Assembly was full of other politicians willing to try. Watching the spectacle, the independent Figaro was moved to bitterness: "The natural ambition of a deputy is to be made a minister, and that of a former minister to become one again. The more governments there are, the better the chances of satisfying this ambition . . . For [them], the important business is cabinet crises . . . Some of these impatient people are very far down the line. They won't board the next bus. They are waiting for the second, or the third . . . They are already working out the rate of wear & tear, not of this government, but of future governments."

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