The Troubles Of Cohabitation

By Otto Friedrich

Bastille Day is traditionally a day for the French to put aside their % differences. But no sooner had Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and conservative Premier Jacques Chirac finished their review of the military parade at the Place de la Concorde last week than Mitterrand issued the sharpest challenge yet to the conservative government with which he has uneasily shared power since March.

At issue was the Chirac Cabinet's proposed decree calling for the gradual denationalization of 65 large, state-owned companies and banks, including the Elf Aquitaine oil trust, the Banque Nationale de Paris, the country's largest, and the telecommunications giant Compagnie Generale d'Electricite. The privatization plan involves enterprises worth about $40 billion.

Mitterrand, who pushed through a program of nationalization after taking power in 1981, wants no part of denationalization and announced that he would not sign the decree. In a ten-minute televised appearance from his gilded study in the Elysee Palace, the President declared that there was a danger of "the national patrimony" being sold at too low a price and of foreign interests gaining control. "Precautions have been taken, but I do not see how they can be kept," Mitterrand said, adding that it was his duty "to assure our national independence."

Forty-eight hours later, Chirac appeared on television to announce that the decree would be submitted instead as a separate parliamentary bill to the National Assembly, where his coalition holds a three-vote majority. Sitting beneath a Gobelin tapestry in his office in the Hotel de Matignon, Chirac politely but pointedly called Mitterrand's concerns "without any foundation" and termed the President's refusal to sign "without precedent."

That was undoubtedly true, but also without precedent is the delicate arrangement known as cohabitation, by which the leftist President and the rightist Premier are sharing the task of ruling France. Under the Fifth Republic, which was established in 1958, governing powers are split between the two posts. That was not a problem as long as both men came from the same party. But after the conservative coalition won the March elections and took over the Cabinet, opposing politicians had to start ruling together.

Despite a long-standing political rivalry between Mitterrand and Chirac, cohabitation has been more amiable than many French pundits had predicted. With last week's clash, however, both leaders signaled that there are limits to their reservoirs of amiability. "Cohabitation is a tandem bicycle," said Assembly Deputy Philippe Mestre in a clash of metaphors, "on which the two cyclists pedal in opposite directions."

Chirac and the Socialist forces also pedaled at cross purposes in two other major controversies last week:

SECURITY. To give the police more power to combat terrorism, the National Assembly has recently adopted measures that created a special antiterrorist unit and allowed random identity checks and detention of suspects for up to four days without charges. Security legislation passed last week tightened visa requirements. Police also gained the power to bar foreigners at the border and expel immigrants suspected of criminal associations.

Chirac supports the new regulations; Mitterrand does not. In the duel on this issue, Mitterrand's chosen weapon last week was the guest list for his annual Bastille Day garden party, held in the Elysee Palace. Mitterrand invited two young Algerian immigrants living in Lyons who had conducted a hunger strike to protest the hard line on law and order. Interior Minister Charles Pasqua was so angered at the President's gesture of support for those protesting the government's legislation that he refused to attend the affair.

TELEVISION. After a numbing 110 hours of often fervid debate, the Senate passed a bill to sell the country's oldest and biggest state-owned television network, TF1. If the National Assembly approves, France will become the first European country to privatize a public TV network. The measure, charged Communist Senator Charles Lederman, is "the same as if we auctioned off Versailles, the Louvre and the Comedie Francaise." Culture and Communications Minister Francois Leotard vehemently disagreed. "TF1 is badly run," he said. "It does not compete with foreign programs and is absolutely incapable of exporting its own productions."

Polls have shown that a strong majority of the French support cohabitation, and last week's confrontation probably does not mean that Mitterrand and Chirac will totally go their separate ways. As Finance Minister Edouard Balladur recently remarked, "In a western movie, the first one to draw his gun usually wins. In cohabitation, it is the opposite: the first one to draw is dead." Apparently, Mitterrand and Chirac still want to avoid that eventuality.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante and Brigid Phillips/Paris