Then There Were Two

After the death of Georges Pompidou last month, a full dozen candidates entered the race to succeed him as President. This week French voters went to the polls for a first-round election that cut the field down to two, and set the stage for one of the most bitter runoff campaigns in French political history. The contenders: Socialist Leader Franc,ois Mitterrand, 57, who is running with increasing power, backed by both his own party and the Communists, and Finance Minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing, 48, the first Establishment candidate to win a shot at the Elysee without the support of the Gaullist old guard. If the polls are to be believed, the race could hardly be tighter: one French forecast gave Giscard 51 % of the vote and Mitterrand 49% in the runoff.

This week, as expected, Mitterrand led his squabbling opponents on the right. The early projections indicated that he pulled about 44% of the vote --short of the absolute majority needed to win the presidency in the first round. Thus the main issue was who would come in second and thereby become Mitterrand's opponent in the runoff on May 19. Giscard, who had been drawing away in the polls from his archrival, former Premier Jacques Chaban-Delmas, won the competition for second place with about 33% of the vote; Chaban, the "official" Gaullist candidate, came in with roughly 15%.

Political Pizazz. In many ways the most telling element of the first round campaign was the sharp decline and fall of Chaban, who had argued that he alone had the kind of political pizazz needed to stop Mitterrand. The flashy, thrice-wed former Resistance hero not only got the endorsement of the old-line Gaullists, but he ceaselessly flaunted it at rallies of the faithful around the country. Yet Chaban's carefully cultivated image of continuity with the past was plainly unappealing to many Frenchmen, who seem to want a change from the elitist tradition of De Gaulle. Although Chaban started out with a slight lead over Giscard in the polls, he was 14 points behind going into this week's election.

While Chaban talked of continuity, Giscard and Mitterrand struck a popular response by calling for new approaches. Mitterrand spoke grandly, if vaguely, of "re-establishing justice in our society," while his Communist allies --widely distrusted by the French middle class--tried to keep from being heard at all. For the first time in years, the Socialists and the Communists did not march in the May Day parade in Paris. Giscard, ignoring the fact that he has served in Gaullist cabinets for nine years, argued that "France needs a young face in all fields, including politics. France will have a new generation --the postwar generation--and with it, we will enter the new era that awaits us." Though most Frenchmen seemed to agree, it remained to be seen whether they would choose their new faces from the left or the right.

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