Springtime for Giscard

After the election, a call for cohabitation with the left

Moments after the news flashed across the country that the left had suffered a crushing defeat in France's parliamentary elections, an eerie calm seemed to settle upon the country. Mercifully, one of the most turbulent, strident and bitterly contested elections in France's modern history had come to a close. Some doomsayers had predicted that there would be demonstrations by embittered leftist workers. But apart from a brief, lively election-night march by a few dozen center-right celebrators, observers on the Champs-Elysees noted only the formation of a patient queue, intent upon nothing more momentous than buying tickets to Rencontres du Troisieme Type (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) at a movie house. The morning after the elections, when, according to some dark prophecies, plans for crippling mass strikes would be hatched, the French quietly went back to work. Indeed, leaders of France's major trade unions, including the Communist-dominated C.G.T. (General Confederation of Labor), showed much more interest in conferring with President Valery Giscard d'Estaing than in demonstrating against his government.

The French appeared to accept fully that "nothing has changed, yet nothing will remain the same," as Political Scientist Jean Chariot described the situation last week. Although the center-right coalition won an unexpected 91-seat majority in the 491-member National Assembly (291, v. 200), the balance of forces between the center-right and the left did not shift dramatically. Yet the Socialist-Communist alliance that had almost wrested the presidency from Giscard in 1974 and made stunning gains in the local elections in 1976 and 1977 now lay in ruins. The left's Common Program, calling for inflationary spending for social benefits and widespread nationalization of French industry, was headed for the rubbish bin of history.

At the same time, Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, 45, the ambitious leader of the Gaullist Party, ceased to be the dominant influence within the center-right coalition. Indeed, one of the election's surprises was that the Union pour la Democratie Franc,aise, a loose group of parties supporting Giscard, had polled a remarkable 6 million votes, only 1.1% less than Chirac's party, thereby breaking the Gaullists' five-year stranglehold on the National Assembly. As a result, Giscard, 51, emerged as both the master of present-day French politics and the architect of the nation's future--at least until his presidential term expires in 1981. Aptly summing up the situation, Paris' left-of-center newspaper Le Quotidien de Paris headlined GISCARD'S SECOND SPRING.

The elections gave Giscard both a popular mandate and the political means to pursue his oft-repeated determination to "modernize French political life." This meant that the President intended to substitute a political consensus for the left-right polarization that has characterized French history. But ever since his 1974 election, Giscard has been thwarted. On the one hand, a strong Gaullist contingent rejected his proposals for reform; on the other, the leftist opposition consistently refused Giscard's overtures, in the hope of gaining power itself.

Despite his victory, Giscard was aware that the election results could be read as a warning as well as a mandate. The popular vote in the runoff dramatically illustrated this: 14.8 million voted for Giscard's center-right, 13.9 million for the other side. Accordingly, in an arresting, postelection appearance on nationwide television last week, Giscard made his first conciliatory move toward the left. Looking relaxed and confident, he extended an open hand. "I am addressing myself to those who voted for the opposition; it was your right. But you should know that for the President of the republic, those who voted Socialist or Communist are as French as anyone else--equal members of a national community." Deploring the "excessive division of the country," he pledged to bring leftists "on the sidelines" into active participation in the government. In a Gallic turn of phrase that may prove historic, Giscard declared: "It is time to achieve what I might call reasonable cohabitation."

Next day Giscard took steps to bring some strange bedfellows into the Elysee Palace. He issued invitations to Communist Party Chief Georges Marchais and Socialist Leader Franc,ois Mitterrand--top leftists who have not been inside the presidential palace since Giscard's election. They both agreed to come for consultations, as did Left Radical President Robert Fabre. Leading the rush to the Elysee were the heads of some of France's biggest trade unions, who had also been invited. They included Andre Bergeron of the 850,000-member Force Ouvriere and Edmond Maire, chief of the Socialist-leaning C.F.D.T., the 805,000-member Democratic Labor Confederation. This week Georges Seguy, the powerful boss of the 2.4 million-member C.G.T., is scheduled to make an unprecedented visit to Giscard.

There was speculation about whom Giscard would name Premier when the National Assembly reopens April 3. Early on, the rumors favored Health Minister Simone Veil, who the polls say is France's most popular political figure, and two prominent Gaullists, ex-Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Justice Minister Alain Peyrefitte. By midweek, however, Elysee sources were confidently predicting that Giscard would reappoint Raymond Barre. After all, it was no coincidence that the three goals of Giscard's new administration--economic recovery, social justice and bureaucratic reform --were spelled out in the presidential address in exactly the same terms as in Barre's own campaign platform. In addition, Giscard had stressed the soundness of the economic policy devised and carried out by Barre in the past year and a half. To appeal to the left, Giscard was also expected to name some nonpolitical, left-leaning figures to his new Cabinet.

The President's tentative "opening to the left" inevitably displeased Chirac, whose indefatigable, tub-thumping anti-Communist campaign had contributed mightily to the center-right coalition's victory in the election. He quickly claimed that his party's "essential role" in the campaign had now given the Gaullists "legitimate means" to carry out their platform, which stresses law and order and faster economic growth. Not to be outdone by Giscard's promises of social change, Chirac, who plans to run for the presidency when Giscard's term expires, asserted that France needs "profound reforms, not superficial mini-reforms." He added: "The government will have to follow a bolder economic and social policy if it wants to win our votes."

Meanwhile, leftist leaders were conducting a bitter postmortem. Mitterrand blamed the left's defeat on the Communists, who "did not hesitate to add their unceasing and violent attacks [against the Socialists] to those of the right." Later, in a closed session of his party's executive committee, he declared: "We did not obtain as many votes as the public opinion polls had predicted because Georges Marchais frightened the undecided voters who were getting ready to cast their ballots for us. They asked themselves how we could govern with the Communists."

Many analysts, including some Socialists, thought it was Mitterrand himself who had frightened undecided voters by his last-minute surrender to Marchais on the issue of how many ministries the Communists would control in the event of a leftist victory. In exchange for Marchais's backing of Socialist candidates in the runoff elections March 19, Mitterrand had agreed to reward the Communists with as many as half of the Cabinet ministries. At that time, Gaston Defferre, the Socialist mayor of Marseille, issued a grave warning to Mitterrand: "Better to lose than give anything to the Communists." Taking a contrary position, the Socialist Party's left wing, which had criticized Mitterrand for not making more concessions to the Communists, refused last week to endorse a Socialist resolution condemning Marchais for "helping the right and postponing the hour of change."

For their part, the Communists were smug about the defeat of the leftist coalition. Indeed, their party's strength has remained stable (at about 21 % of the popular vote) for the past 20 years. Many observers thought Marchais had deliberately set out to sabotage the left's alliance rather than risk being dominated by the Socialists in a leftist government. Still, Marchais was hardly prepared to explain what his behind-the-scenes strategy had been. His brash postelection comment was, simply, "We are more than ever convinced that a union of the left is necessary." The party daily, L 'Humanite, claimed categorically that "the Communist Party did everything to win."

The failure of Mitterrand's attempt to link his personal ambitions to the Communists now renders his political future highly precarious. Moreover, Mitterrand's capitulation to Marchais has made a mockery of his much-touted ability to keep the Communists under control. Last week there was talk that the Socialist leader, now 61, might be headed for retirement. Still, in his 32-year political career, he has frequently exhibited a talent, reminiscent of Richard Nixon's, for bouncing back from defeat. But even if Mitterrand should survive as his party's leader, he remains an improbable candidate for cohabitation with the President, who dislikes him. That situation, at least, seems beyond Giscard's remarkable powers of revitalization--even in the warm, budding days of his second spring.

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