Brawling Before the Elections

The emergence of an unprecedented four-sided battle

While the Italian political crisis was erupting, the politicians in France last week were heading for their own donnybrook. On the one side, a rift in the painfully constructed union of the left widened dramatically, with the Communists denouncing their Socialist partners. On the other, the faltering government of Premier Raymond Barre was faced with a sharpening hostility between supporters of Barre's boss, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, who had been Premier himself before he quit to reorganize the Gaullist party. What was once anticipated to be a clear-cut duel between left and right in the March parliamentary elections had degenerated to a four-sided political brawl. Unlike their Italian brethren, who were surging forward, France's Communists were spewing gall.

It was time formally to open the campaign for the forthcoming elections, and the left was in utter disarray. In 1972 the Communists and Socialists had combined forces to create a "common program" of ideas with which they would rule France together. Not six months ago, in fact, French pollsters had predicted an electoral victory of the left that would have given President Giscard the unhappy prospect of appointing a Socialist as his Premier and seeing Communists in the Cabinet. But a serious political falling-out between Communist Boss Georges Marchais and Socialist Party Leader Francois Mitterrand seemed to sink that possibility; in an attempt to update their common program, the two could not agree on the extent to which some of the nation's top industries should be nationalized once the left assumed power.

Last week, Marchais declared that the time had come for "a formidable battle" against the Socialists. Among other things that upset him, Marchais was enraged because two weeks ago Jimmy Carter had warned the Socialists' Mitterrand that the U.S. would be displeased to see a renewal of the leftist alliance. (Evidently embarrassed, Mitterrand denied Carter had said any such thing.) Marchais charged that his erstwhile partner had made a treacherous "right turn" in connivance with "forces beyond our frontiers." Accusing the Socialists of duplicity, he said that he was "irresistibly reminded" of the doubletalking bat in a La Fontaine fable who masqueraded as a mouse or, when it proved more expedient, as a bird.

To hammer home his displeasure with the Socialists, Marchais unveiled a strategy that if pursued to the end would virtually assure the left of defeat in March. In the first round of voting, on March 12, the electorate chooses its favored candidates in an elimination contest. In the second, or runoff, round, held a week later, the custom among allied parties, left or right, requires the losing side to support the first-round winner. Thus if a Socialist candidate scored higher in Round 1, he would receive Communist support in Round 2. But Marchais decreed that the Communists would refuse to vote Socialist in the runoff if they received no more than 21% in the first round. That was precisely the percentage that the polls were predicting for the Communists. It was simply an act of political blackmail, aimed at strengthening the Communist Party at the expense of the Socialists.

Thus did Marchais demonstrate that the motive for his break with the Socialists last fall had more to do with power politics than with ideology. The Communist Party, once the dominant political force on the left, has been overshadowed by the Socialists in recent years. Communist support has remained roughly stable--about 20% of the electorate--but the Socialists have climbed from 5% to nearly 30% since 1969. Marchais obviously felt that it would be better for the left to lose the elections altogether if the Communists could not win on their own terms. Mitterrand was clearly angered. "Is it possible," he asked, "that the Communist Party, under the pretext of not achieving a certain percentage, would sacrifice the immense hopes of the French?"

Giscard could take some consolation from the disarray on the left, but his side, too, was afflicted with internal bickering. His coalition could not continue to rule without the Gaullists, who now control 60% of the government's parliamentary majority. But the Gaullists' Chirac was intent on retaining his party's separate identity and position of dominance within the government. In addition, he refused to support Giscard's economic programs.

Giscard was further burdened by his own lackluster Premier. Barre is a former economics professor who has pursued an unpopular austerity program. Last week he launched the government's campaign with a 30-point program of "action goals for liberty and justice"--mainly measures calculated to ease economic pressures on businesses and workers.

Taking a swipe at the left, Barre asked a party rally: "What future is reserved for France if production is disorganized by massive nationalizations, if all economic activity is controlled by state-owned banks, if inflation accelerates because of excessive increases in wages and social benefits, if our trade balance deteriorates, if our currency depreciates rapidly?" Answering his own question, he replied: "What future, if not the closure of our borders, isolation, inward regression, international decline and more and more constraints on our economy and our society."

Under different circumstances, Barre's classic political mix of threats and rewards might have won approval from French voters, but his promises seemed to lag behind reality. Unemployment stood at 1.05 million (4.8% of the work force); inflation, down a mere half-point since Barre took over 17 months ago, is still racing along at an annual rate of 9%, and the economic growth rate creeped at a sluggish 3%. The irony was that despite the falling out between Marchais and Mitterrand, the latest polls showed a 51% to 45% voter preference for the left. The two-phase elections, however, will not necessarily produce like results. Referring to Marchais's intransigence, a Socialist leader last week sized up the prospects. "If there is no electoral accord," said he, "the left will lose."

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