The Duumvirate

Besides trying to solve the war in Viet Nam, break up NATO and remold the Common Market nearer to his nationalist desires, Charles de Gaulle also has to protect his rear, which was badly mauled in his humiliating encounter with the French electorate in December. Last week, as a starter, he presented a new economic plan aimed at wooing voters back into the Gaullist camp before the upcoming parliamentary elections take place. The plan promised a 10% tax credit on capital spending for business, an easing of credit and price controls, a $20-per-year hike in old-age pensions, a 2.12% boost in France's minimum wage and subsidies for slum clearance and agricultural development.

Modest though it was, the plan represented quite an unbending of the French economy by De Gaulle's austere standards for his Fifth Republic. The man he chose to carry out the change is a proven expert in bending over backward: Finance and Economics Minister Michel Debre, 54. Before he became De Gaulle's first Premier in 1959, Debre had been totally committed to keeping Algeria French; his main task turned out to be implementing De Gaulle's policy for Algerian independence. De Gaulle rewarded Debre in the arbitrary manner of princes, dumping him in 1962 for suave, casual Banker-about-Town Georges Pompidou. "To be, to have been," said Debre in farewell, "the first collaborator of General de Gaulle is a title without equal."

For a time it also seemed that it would be a title without sequel. Turned out of Parliament by his home town of Tours, Debre got back into official Paris only when De Gaulle let him run for Deputy from the tiny, safe, Indian Ocean island of Reunion. Debre finally was given his comeback chance last month when De Gaulle bounced Finance Minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing, his hand-picked and once favored architect of austerity. Debre got Giscard's job, expanded into a kind of superministry over much of the French Cabinet's domestic activities.

That puts Debre right where he wants to be, bidding against Pompidou to be De Gaulle's No. 1 collaborator. Few people in Paris think that he can unseat Pompidou as De Gaulle's choice for President chiefly because the acerbic, colorless Debre has proved himself virtually unelectable. What may emerge, Elysee theologians believe, is a kind of duumvirate, with the genial Pompidou as a winning President to succeed De Gaulle--and the dour Debre as tough, party-lining Premier.

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