Revolution Accomplished

Into the tapestried Salle des Fetes of the Elysee Palace one morning last week filed 200 of the French Community's most eminent soldiers, scholars and politicians. Solemnly the glittering assemblage heard the president of the provisional Constitutional Council read off the results of last month's presidential elections. At his last words--"I proclaim General Charles de Gaulle elected President of the Republic" --the guns began to boom out a triumphant salute. "The first among Frenchmen." said retiring President Rene Coty in a voice heavy with emotion, "is now the first-ranking man in France."

Conscious as he was of the drama of the occasion--for the first time in his public career he appeared decked out in morning coat and striped pants--Charles de Gaulle nonetheless kept his inaugural speech characteristically short. He paid tribute to his predecessor ("a great citizen"), whose threat to resign office last May played a major part in persuading France's National Assembly to vote De Gaulle back into power.* As for himself, De Gaulle continued. "In the nation the national interest, in the Community the common interest--that is what it is my duty to represent, to enhance and, should the public safety demand it, even to impose."

New Face, New Title. Within an hour after he moved into the Elysee (where Madame de Gaulle had already installed outsized twin beds in the room formerly occupied by Coty), De Gaulle was already functioning as President. To no one's surprise, he named as his Premier 47-year-old Gaullist Lawyer Michel Debre (TIME, Jan. 12). Debre's Cabinet, chosen jointly by the new Premier and De Gaulle himself, numbered no Socialists--Socialist Leader Guy Mollet and his colleagues refused to share in De Gaulle's economic austerity--but 17 of its members were holdovers from De Gaulle's old Cabinet. Most noteworthy new face: Roger Frey, onetime planter on the Pacific island of New Caledonia, who was De Gaulle's representative at MacArthur's headquarters. He succeeded scholarly, ambitious Jacques Soustelle as Minister of Information. To Soustelle, who had asked for the powerful Interior Ministry on the strength of his key role in the revolt that returned De Gaulle to office, went the ambiguous title of Minister Delegated to the Premier's Office. How much real power would go with this post would presumably depend on how well Soustelle and De Gaulle get along in the future.

Power to Decree. Along with De Gaulle's old title of Premier, Debre legally inherited the power to rule France by decree for another three weeks until the constitution of the Fifth Republic goes into full effect. But he probably will find little to decree. In recent weeks De Gaulle has already issued more than 200 decrees revamping almost every major aspect of French political and economic life. Among the last of De Gaulle's decrees was one authorizing decentralization of "the belly of Paris," the antiquated wholesale market of Les Halles. which, by its inefficiency, has for decades unnaturally inflated food prices all over France.

Looking back last week on the seven months between the demise of the Fourth Republic and the final emergence of De Gaulle's Fifth Republic, Frenchmen could see much undone, but also much under way. And one thing deserved a cheer. "For the first time in our history," said Rene Coty in his farewell speech, "a revolution, a necessary and constructive revolution, has been carried out in a spirit of calm and respect for the laws."

Mixed with the cheers for De Gaulle were a few rumbles of discontent. Two days before the general's inauguration, 1,000 Paris gas and electricity workers demonstrated against his austerity budget. Algeria's right-wing representatives in the National Assembly were angered by a phrase in De Gaulle's inaugural speech showing that he does not consider Algeria a part of Metropolitan France. French colonists in Algeria were even more disturbed by the prospect that De Gaulle, as President, intends to pardon five Algerian rebel captives, kidnaped by French agents on a 1956 flight to Tunis. Among them is Mohammed ben Bella. Deputy Premier of the Algerian government-in-exile. The five would be transferred from a Paris prison to more comfortable detention on Belle-He, off the coast of Brittany.

* In a move started by a Radio Luxembourg announcer, hundreds of thousands of "Thank you, Mr. President" telegrams have been pouring into Coty's office in affectionate tribute to a sturdy and kindly personage.

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