Agnew `a la Mode

Through the marbled corridors of Paris' Palace of Justice last week wound a singular procession. After closing down their courts, nearly a thousand magistrates from all over the capital marched through the halls in their black gowns. Across France, thousands of other magistrates suspended court in protest.

What ruffled the jurists was an ill-advised comment by a previously obscure politician named Rene Tomasini, 51. Elected secretary-general of the Gaullist party only last month, the outspoken Tomasini made his maiden appearance before the parliamentary correspondents' association last week, and he sounded like a Gallic Spiro Agnew. He lauded the French policeman as "the representative of liberty." He declared that any breakdown in law-and-order was not the fault of the police but was due to "the cowardice of the magistrates." He lit into the state-owned television networks for showing "the negative aspects of French life." Finally, he blamed Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas for letting the networks get away with it.

Tomasini's speech lit up switchboards all over France. Much of the reaction, he claimed, was support for his position from France's own Silent Majority. But judges, lawyers, journalists and most politicians were furious; Combat, a liberal anti-Gaullist newspaper, dubbed the Corsican-born secretary-general "Mussolini Tomasini." Angriest of all were France's students, who had already been demonstrating over what has become known as the "Guiot Affair." Lycee Student Gilles Guiot, 19, was arrested during a demonstration early last month for hitting a policeman; denied bail and access to a defense attorney, he was convicted on police testimony and sentenced to three months in prison. While Guiot's appeal was being heard last week, 10,000 students took over the Boulevard St.-Michel from the Sorbonne to the Seine. It was the biggest student demonstration since the May 1968 riots.

Guiot's case, as it turned out, was dismissed at the urging of the state prosecutor, who pointed out that the police might have been mistaken. The appeals-court judges, angered by Tomasini's insults, seemed delighted to comply, reversed Guiot's conviction. Tomasini withdrew his charge of cowardice after meeting with President Georges Pompidou. "Perhaps 'misunderstanding' would be a better word," he said lamely. With Tomasini backtracking and the students appeased, calm was restored for the time being, at least.

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