The Negative Majority

At 11:45 one night last week the presiding officer of the French National Assembly finished tolling the vote on Premier Maurice Bourges-Maunoury's plan for constitutional reform in revolt-torn Algeria. Solemnly, the President announced the result--279 against, 253 for--then added the ritual sentence, "Confidence is thus refused." At a moment when the nation was all but engulfed by a sea of troubles, France had chosen to bring down its 23rd government since World War II.

The man who overthrew hapless Maurice Bourges-Maunoury headed one of the smallest blocs in France's National Assembly. As leader of the Social Republicans, the vestiges of General Charles de Gaulle's once-mighty Rally of the French People, burly, beetle-browed Jacques Soustelle, 45, commanded only 15 votes. But he was helped by the kind of historic coincidence that is more historic than coincidental.

Even while Bourges-Maunoury in a thin, emotion-cracked voice stammered out defenses of his loi cadre (skeleton law) for Algeria, leaders of 21 million Negroes in French Africa met at Bamako in French Sudan and decried France's recent efforts to give them limited self-rule, instead demanded something close to total independence. French conservatives sputtered that this demonstration proved that some concessions only lead to demands for more. Meantime another blow fell. The U.S. approved Italy's tentative offer to send arms to Tunisia, where they could be used to prevent French troops from chasing Algerian rebels inside Tunisian territory.

"The killing of Frenchmen by Italian bullets has Mr. Dulles' benediction," declared Soustelle and succeeded in transforming the debate into an outburst of resentment at France's allies for their supposed attempts to evict France from its African Empire. In this atmosphere, Soustelle succeeded in briefly uniting Communists, Poujadists, Gaullists and conservative Independents into a shouting majority that toppled the government. "BOURGES SHOT DOWN BY AMERICANS," headlined the Paris weekly Aux Ecoutes.

Obverse Side. By the logic of the National Assembly, declared Le Figaro the following day, the next Premier should be Jacques Soustelle and his principal ministers, Communist Jacques Duclos and cryptoFascist Pierre Poujade. By its very absurdity this suggestion laid bare the essential weakness of the French parliamentary structure, which allows all kinds of opinions but has no mechanism to force decisions. With 139 Communists and 32 Poujadists among its 594 members, the Assembly has what amounts to a negative majority against nearly every proposal, can contrive a positive majority on only the shakiest foundations. Thus a Premier can always find a majority for his pork-barrel measures, e.g., increased old-age pensions. But when it comes to the obverse side of the coin--raising taxes to pay for the increased pensions--the majority vanishes.

Even if Bourges-Maunoury had survived the loi cadre debate, he was unlikely to have survived. Outraged by Finance Minister Felix Gaillard's attempt to freeze wages, 1,600,000 industrial and construction workers last week walked out in an ominous "warning" strike; in dozens of provincial cities irate farmers assembled to demonstrate against the frozen prices of agricultural produce.

Oracle in Paris. As the realization that there was a majority against Bourges-Maunoury but no majority for anyone else dawned on France, it became conceivable that what had begun as a crise grave* might end as a crise de regime, i.e., the ultimate crisis of the Fourth Republic, which would force a fundamental change in its structure.

As it always does, the mere thought of a crise de regime turned the talk to the ever-ready strongman, General de Gaulle. By the sheerest coincidence, the hawk-nosed wartime leader, now 66, chose last week to make one of his periodic excursions to Paris. Typically, De Gaulle's utterances had a Delphic quality. Said he: "You tell me that the political men of all groups are unanimous in affirming that only De Gaulle can find a solution. But name me one person who has said so in Parliament." Then he added: "I could not make peace in Algeria without a blank check from Parliament, and this the present regime would not grant me."

The Ripening. At week's end all signs were that De Gaulle was right. In the approved manner, quiet President Rene Coty let the crisis "ripen" for three days, then called in Socialist Guy Mollet, and asked him to form a government. When Mollet admitted defeat, Coty turned to Rene Pleven, head of the small U.D.S.R., whose chances of success were, if anything, less than Mollet's.

Bloodshed in Algeria, onrushing economic chaos and a steady loss of international respect were all painful, but as yet, apparently, not painful enough to force France into reshaping her crippled political order.

* In the French scale of reckoning, a crise grave, which involves major issues, ranks one degree above a crise banale, which is a consequence of pure partisan fighting.

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