Election in December

When the present French Assembly expires, all France--and most of the rest of the world, too--will find it easy to contain its grief. In 4 1/2 years, the Assembly has overthrown six governments, spent one week out of every five bogged down in a Cabinet crisis, tabled more than 13,000 bills while approving less than 1,000. Last week the Deputies were maneuvered into voting themselves out of office six months before their time.

The man who brought it off was agile Premier Edgar Faure, a wily practitioner of parliamentary maneuver. After squeaking through three confidence votes in less than three weeks, each time constructing his majority from a different grouping, Faure hoped that new elections might give him a working majority. The possibility of prematurely losing their plush red seats filled Deputies of all parties with dismay. One of them argued that elections before Christmas would be cruel because voting usually takes place in schools, and "our schools are never adequately warmed in December." Children, he seemed to be arguing, may be subjected to cold but not voters.

Before facing the people, each party wanted to change the voting rules to favor its own candidates. The present Assembly was elected under a system which penalized the extremes (Communists and Gaullists) in favor of the center. The man who called most loudly for electoral reform was ex-Premier Pierre

Mendes-France. Both Edgar Faure and Mendes-France, old friends who are now open enemies, belong to the same center party, the Radicals, but while Faure holds office by getting the right to support the center, Mendes-France wants to regain office by uniting left and center. To organize his new non-Communist left, Mendes-France needs time, and by calling for early elections, Faure hopes to deny him that time.

Mendes tried to delay elections by demanding electoral reforms first. Faure blandly said he would accept any one of a dozen proposed electoral plans before the House, but demanded a vote of confidence on elections soon. He won, 330-211, with the help of 88 Communist votes. Presumably the Communists would just as soon have an early election while the spirit of Geneva is still in the air and voters everywhere are grumbling about the Saar, North Africa; the draft and the high cost of living.

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