Embarrassing Embrace

The president of France's National Assembly sits high above the 627 deputies in a huge, brassbound armchair, and acts like the umpire at a political tennis match. Constitutionally, he ranks second only to the President of the Republic. Financially, his job is a choice plum: $15,000 a year, a black, six-cylinder Citroen and a chauffeur, a big apartment in the Palais Bourbon with Louis XV furniture, Sevres china, gold-plated silverware, even free gas and electricity.

Last week France, which recently had trouble choosing a President of the Republic, had to pick an Assembly president. Grand old (81) Edouard Herriot, crippled by phlebitis, had declined the job which he has ably filled since 1947. (The Assembly thereupon made him its honorary president, the first in French history, and will let him keep quarters in the Palais Bourbon.)

The choice of Herriot's successor quickly narrowed down to right-of-center Pierre Pflimlin and a 69-year-old Socialist lawyer named Andre Le Troquer, the Assembly's vice president for the past six years. In the predominantly rightist Assembly, Pflimlin was the favorite. But after three ballots, Le Troquer, one-armed veteran of World War I and a man of the Resistance in World War II, won by a vote of 300 to 251.

What happened to Pierre Pflimlin? His devotion to Roman Catholicism had lost him anticlerical votes on the right and center; his outspoken endorsement of EDC had cost him Gaullist support. But France's Communists were the really decisive force behind Le Troquer's victory.

While the conservatives dissipated their strength in quibblings, the Communists threw their 100-vote bloc solidly to Le Troquer. Crowed the Reds in a special victory communique: "By their vote the Communists intend to show their will to fight with the Socialist workers to pre vent ratification of the Bonn agreements and the Treaty of Paris [EDC]." Next day Socialist Le Troquer, a good anti-Communist who is regarded as "more for than against" the EDC, tried to shake off this unilateral attempt to recreate a Popular Front. Said he in his acceptance speech, as the Reds sat silent: "I wish to address our heartfelt and grateful salute to our French brothers and our Vietnamese comrades who are defending a sacred cause on the soil of Indo-China."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.