France Shades of Le Grand Charles

By William R. Doerner

Blessed with incumbency and lack of a serious challenge from the left, Socialist President Francois Mitterrand, 71, easily captured the front runner's spot in this year's French presidential campaign. The real contest leading up to the first round of voting on April 24 was between his two conservative opponents, Premier Jacques Chirac and former Premier Raymond Barre, who were running neck and neck in the polls as recently as February. This week the campaign moves into its final phase, during which the release of new voter surveys is forbidden. The biggest news in the flurry of last-minute polls was not that Mitterrand continued to lead the field but that Chirac had emerged as a clear favorite to challenge him in the second round of balloting on May 8.

According to a poll published in the weekly Le Point, the President could capture as much as 37.5% of the vote in the first round. Chirac and Barre, who had split a 40% share almost evenly in earlier surveys, collected about the same total in this one, but it was weighted in Chirac's favor, 24.5% to 16%. Moreover, while the survey results indicated that Chirac would lose to Mitterrand 48% to 52% in a two-way race, they also showed that Barre would fare worse, losing 46% to 54%. The Le Point findings represented a sharp setback for Barre, 64, who had based his candidacy on the contention that he was the center right's best bet to beat Mitterrand. Barre gamely sought to fire up his campaign in the final days, adding factory tours and cafe stops, but the momentum appeared to remain with Chirac. Said a Chirac campaign official of Barre's comeback chances: "We believe it is too late for him."

Chirac, the first of the major candidates to enter the race, conducted a run-everywhere campaign and relied heavily on the formidable organization of his neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic Party. Barre, by contrast, played down his association with the Union for French Democracy, a loose coalition of center-right parties, and consequently failed to secure a partisan boost. Even though Barre, an economics professor, offered a more trenchant critique of Mitterrand's economic and defense policies than Chirac, all too often he did so in a style better suited to university lecture halls than to political rallies. Said Political Scientist Olivier Duhamel of the University of Paris- Nanterre: "He has spoken Gaullist words but failed to achieve a Gaullist style."

If so, Barre was not the only candidate to try. In a campaign that has heavily emphasized style over substance, Gaullist imagery cropped up often enough, as it has in past contests, to give an eerie ring of arrived truth to Charles de Gaulle's imperious prophecy that "every Frenchman was, is or one day will be a Gaullist." Mitterrand, an opponent of De Gaulle for the ten years of the general's presidency, also presented himself as an above-the-fray candidate, rarely mentioning the word Socialist and allowing himself to be described by Socialist Party Chairman Lionel Jospin as a leader who acquired popular support "far beyond the normal limits of his political camp." Chirac, with more ideological claim to the De Gaulle mantle than either of the other candidates, but too young to talk of deep personal ties to him, was careful to invoke the general's name in speeches and to collect endorsements of venerables from the Gaullist era.

In sharp contrast to such bows to the past was the heavy reliance on U.S.-style campaigning. Ever eager to project a youthful image, Chirac, 55, obtained endorsements from 120 leading sports figures, including Cycling Champion Jeannie Longo, and appeared at rallies with rock stars like Johnny Hallyday. He even publicized an endorsement from Actor Gregory Peck. Not to be outdone, Mitterrand supporters persuaded Veteran Crooner Charles Trenet to record a ditty called Vas-Y Tonton ("Go to It, Uncle," a play on Mitterrand's nickname, "Tonton"). Though campaign advertising is not permitted on television, the growth of privately owned channels in recent years enabled candidates to saturate the tube with appearances on news and feature shows. Even candidates' wives, who in the past played little or no part in campaigns, were lured before the cameras.

All three candidates agree on the broad outlines of foreign and defense policy, with provisions for the maintenance of an independent nuclear force de frappe regardless of future disarmament moves by the superpowers. Mitterrand calls for reimposing the so-called wealth tax on the unearned income of the rich, a measure repealed by the Chirac government after it assumed power in 1986. Chirac promises to continue selling off industries nationalized by Mitterrand in the early part of his seven-year term. While Mitterrand opposes such a move, even he no longer wants to pursue what he calls the "ballet" of renationalizing firms made private under Chirac.

The most explosive issue of the campaign focuses on France's immigrant population, some 4 million people, many of them North Africans. Resentment of their claims on social and employment resources has been fanned, frequently with racial undertones, by Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front. Chirac and Barre, either of whom would need Le Pen's expected 11% of next week's vote to go their way in the second round, are handling the matter with caution, calling for immigration reforms based on the recent recommendations of a high-level commission. Mitterrand favors a new law that would allow legal immigrants lacking citizenship to vote in local elections.

Whether the conservative survivor of the first round is Chirac or Barre, he will almost certainly find himself still trailing Mitterrand in the polls. But with the gap as narrow as the 4% shown in the Le Point poll, there may be time in the two weeks before the second round to mount a credible come-from-behind campaign. If not, Mitterrand will be the first French President to serve a second term since -- who else -- Charles de Gaulle.

With reporting by Jordan Bonfante/Lyons and Adam Zagorin/Rennes