FRANCE REJECTS DE GAULLE

FOR 30 years, his destiny and that of France had been inseparably intertwined. For over a decade, he had presided over France in as rare an identification of ruler and ruled as modern history shows. In many ways he was an anachronism. He dealt in abstract verities more than in practical politics. He bullied in an age of persuasion; he dictated in an era of dialogue. But through it all there was always some curious alchemy between Charles de Gaulle and the people of France when it came down to the irrevocable out or non. It seemed inconceivable, even as the damning evidence of election-eve polls mounted, that the French would deny him another victory. Nonetheless, they did. By a margin of 53 to 47% in a referendum that De Gaulle had needlessly elevated to a test of confidence, France last week rejected its President.

As always, he was as good as his word. In a final television appeal to the nation two days before the balloting, he had repeated an earlier warning to resign at once "if I am disavowed." Shortly after midnight on Monday morning, the voting trend unmistakable, De Gaulle sent a two-sentence communique to Paris from his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises. It said: "I am ceasing the exercise of my functions as President of the Republic. This decision takes effect at noon today."

Gracelessly Sacked. It was a decision whose immediate consequence was to elevate President of the Senate Alain Poher, 60, to the interim presidency of the Republic. Under the constitution that De Gaulle himself created, Poher must call an election in no sooner than 20 and no later than 35 days for a new and permanent French President. Poher, a member of the Centrist Party, might be a candidate, as might Centrist Leader Jean Lecanuet, a dedicated European integrationist, and Communist Jacques Duclos among others. But the most formidable candidate was likely to be Georges Pompidou, 57, long De Gaulle's righthand man and Premier until last July, when the general peremptorily and gracelessly sacked him for doing all too well in handling the student-worker crisis.

In the first hours of De Gaulle's defeat, the jovial, ursine Pompidou was maintaining the respectful silence of a mourner. A onetime classics teacher, he knew how to honor the tragedy of the fall of a great man. But as a former Rothschild banker, he was also well aware of the fund of admiration and good will that the French people hold for him. When the Latin Quarter was a battleground last May and June, De Gaulle cut and ran for Colombey and very nearly quit. Pompidou took over, and in a round-the-clock performance under strong pressure, effectively ran the government and cooled the crisis. He felt then that "a current" passed between himself and the country, and quietly told friends that "I will either be the next President of France or the leader of the opposition." He campaigned hard for De Gaulle's referendum, but he never took the step that some Gaullists urged on him: to promise publicly that he would not run for the presidency if De Gaulle lost.

Monumental Error. There were cynics who suggested that the reassuring presence of Pompidou on the apres-De Gaulle horizon had in fact helped French voters send De Gaulle into retirement. Obviously that alone could not explain De Gaulle's defeat. Clearly, enough French voters had had enough of the general after eleven years, and finally rebelled at being forced to vote oui in referendums not because of the issues involved but because the President threatened to take his marbles and go home. In staking his office on this referendum, De Gaulle had erred. Like all his acts, the error proved monumental. There was no need to tie himself to a set of proposals that did not seem to matter much to many French.

The referendum had started out months ago as a simple device to enable the people of France to vote on the constitutional changes needed to carry out a long-planned decentralization of the country's top-heavy administration. What De Gaulle proposed was to redistrict France's historic 95 departments into 21 economic regions, each having its own legislature. Referendums are expensive propositions and thus infrequent (this was the fifth in the Fifth Republic's history), so the President decided to dispose of a few other matters at the same time. He lumped in a provision to downgrade the Senate and turn it into a council of wise men without powers. Significantly, he also proposed to change the law so as to make his prime minister and not the Senate president his interim successor.

The package did not amuse the French; it did not even interest them. Three weeks before the vote, public-opinion samples indicated that over half the electorate either would not vote or had no opinion on the issues. An impossible situation, De Gaulle concluded, that could only be saved by his personal intervention. He would threaten to resign "without delay" if the French did not come around. He so informed the French in a TV address on April 25, despite Cabinet warnings that he might lose. Even Poher told De Gaulle he was taking an enormous risk. "The general listened to me politely, but he didn't hear me," said Poher later.

With the fate of the government at stake, the Gaullists launched into a furious campaign for a yes vote. As always, the resources of the government-controlled radio and TV were exploited shamelessly to sell the regime's case. Nearly every Gaullist Cabinet member hit the hustings. The Ministry of the Interior sent out millions of pamphlets explaining the referendum. Every specter was invoked by the Gaullists: a run on the franc and certain devaluation if De Gaulle was repudiated (possible), a resumption of student unrest (perhaps), the threat of some vague Communist uprising (highly unlikely).

Counting on Women. It was all to no avail, and there were small signs that near the end, De Gaulle's understanding of the French people had not failed and he suspected the outcome. At his regular Wednesday Cabinet meeting last week, he wryly told his ministers: "In principle, we will meet again next Wednesday." He taped his final TV appeal, then departed Paris for Colombey, prepared not to come back to the Elysee Palace again if the vote went against him. Every final poll indicated a defeat, even his own Interior Ministry's private poll. But the number of undecideds was large. It was hard to believe that ultimately De Gaulle would not triumph. All his grand gestures--ending the Algerian war, vetoing the British entry into the Common Market, withdrawing militarily from NATO, refusing to devalue the franc--had been dramatic. So, too, was his defeat.

The Gaullists had prayed for rain on referendum day, believing that the more Affluent voters, who tend to be Gaullists, might go away on a sunny weekend rather than vote. The general's followers counted on the women, always Gaullist supporters in heavy numbers, to turn out. They hoped for a heavy turnout, so that the field would not be left to the opposition. The rains came; 53% of the vote was female; the turnout was 80%, equal to the heaviest voting during the 1968 crisis. Still De Gaulle lost, indicating how much he had misjudged the unhappiness, dissatisfaction and mood of his countrymen. At the same time, what De Gaulle's cause lacked was the context of crisis. If Frenchmen had felt themselves in real trouble, they might have rallied to De Gaulle again. Now they were unhappy with De Gaulle and no longer frightened of a future without him.

The polls closed at 8 p.m. in France. The first result in was from the tiny Norman village of Champ de la Pierre, normally a Gaullist stronghold. It was an ominous 22 to 6 against the proposal. However not until 8:31 at the Ministry of Interior, where the votes were being tallied, did the nons forge into the lead, as a ministry official announced in a flat voice that the negatives were now some 35,000 ahead, out of some 4.6 million votes cast. From that point, De Gaulle never caught up again and the margin began to widen.

Breaking the News. It was left to Premier Maurice Couve de Murville to break the news. Shortly before 11, his diplomat's face creased with uncharacteristic emotion, he went before the TV cameras. "It is with profound sadness," he said, "that I have learned the result of the vote. It is an event of seriousness that will very soon become apparent to the whole of France and throughout the world. General de Gaulle was at the center of our political and national life, re-establishing peace, restoring the state and ensuring the stability of power."

The Premier was of course correct in his litany of what De Gaulle had wrought for France in the years of the Fifth Republic. So sure was De Gaulle's hand in the Elysee, and his own conviction of style, that it is difficult to recall the pre-Gaullist days when France was in constant turmoil. In a sense, De Gaulle was a victim of his own success. He so restored the confidence and self-assurance of his nation that, finally, it decided that it was ready to go on without him.

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