And Now to Business

When France's newly elected National Assembly convened in Paris last week, it was a far different body from the rebellious lower house that toppled Premier Georges Pompidou's government two months ago. Many of the nation's best-known politicians and four of the old party labels had vanished. With the first absolute majority that any political group has ever commanded in the Assembly, Gaullist Deputies wasted no time in re-electing Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Gaullist mayor of Bordeaux, who had been Speaker of the old Assembly.

By contrast with the Assembly, Premier Pompidou's Cabinet was little changed. Key posts remained in the hands of trusted veterans such as suave, multilingual Maurice Couve de Murville, Charles de Gaulle's faithful Foreign Minister, and brainy Finance Minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who led a wing of the rightist Independent Party into the Gaullist camp during the election. Though there were few new faces in the government, its most pressing legislative goals were underscored by the jobs that went to two of De Gaulle's top troubleshooters, Louis Joxe and Christian Fouchet.

Joxe, who negotiated the Algerian peace, was given the task of overhauling the vast, archaic administrative system, whose authority in France's 90 provincial departments has been steadily eroded by the centralization of government. Former Information Minister Fouchet, was assigned the even more arduous job of modernizing the nation's educational system, which is woefully short of classrooms, teachers and facilities for technical education (only 3% of all French students go on to a university).

De Gaulle himself aims to see his program through to fulfillment. Though his presidential term expires in three years, he hinted last week that he plans to stay at the helm of France at least until the next Assembly elections in five years.

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