A Campaign Catches Fire

Giscard takes on his challengers--and those notorious diamonds

The French presidential campaign had begun to resemble a tedious exercise in shadowboxing and issue ducking. Valery Giscard d'Estaing remained in lofty seclusion behind the ornate iron gates of the Elysee Palace. Socialist Candidate Francois Mitterrand slipped away for tours to the U.S. and China. Neo-Gaullist Jacques Chirac drifted off for a week in the Caribbean. Even Communist Candidate Georges Marchais confined himself largely to preaching to the converted in party districts like Paris' working-class suburbs. Then suddenly last week, the gloves came off and the slugging began.

Giscard landed the first blows. During a televised panel interview, he taunted principal rival Mitterrand, a two-time loser in previous election bids, for his record as France's most unsuccessful presidential candidate. Giscard charged that sooner or later Mitterrand would be forced to make a deal with the Communists. The pointed implication: he would not be able to get elected, or govern, without Communist support.

It was a masterly performance. Gone were the Louis XV chairs and crystal chandeliers of Giscard's previous televised appearances from the presidential palace that had contributed to a growing image of "monarchical" hauteur. In the state-run TV studio, a relaxed and animated President chatted, swiveled in his chair and consulted visual aids to make his points. His new style made a good-humored mockery of journalists' questions about the "Giscardian monarchy." Said he: "You are posing stupid questions, but I will answer them."

Mitterrand retaliated with a broadside of his own. Speaking in a televised campaign appearance, he called Giscard Moscow's "little mailman," a malicious reference to charges that the French President had conveyed word from Leonid Brezhnev last year of a phony Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The President, he continued, had received a virtual endorsement from the Soviet newspaper Pravda for his secret meeting with Brezhnev last May. Said Mitterrand: "I understand why Pravda is content with Mr. Giscard d'Estaing. I did not wait eleven days to protest the invasion of Afghanistan." Fortunately, he added, "it is not the Russians who are voting, but the French." In his own defense, Mitterrand managed to downplay his major liability--past association with the defunct Socialist-Communist Alliance--by indicating that he would bring no Communists into a Mitterrand Cabinet.

Giscard lieutenants, who only the day before had talked smugly about remaining above the fray, could no longer contain themselves. Foreign Minister Jean Franc,ois-Poncet blasted Mitterrand for his lack of patriotism and the "rudeness of his expression." Fumed Prime Minister Raymond Barre: "As a Frenchman, I was revolted."

The other two major candidates were quick to pass judgment on the Giscard-Mitterrand crossfire, and both took aim at Giscard. Paris Mayor Chirac, leader of the Gaullist wing of Giscard's own center-right coalition, accused Giscard's defenders of being antidemocratic for trying to portray Mitterrand's dissenting view of Giscard's foreign policy as an attack on the honor of France. Marchais, meanwhile, criticized Mitterrand for going too easy on Giscard. "The only reproach Mitterrand makes is that Giscard is not sufficiently anti-Soviet," he snapped with characteristic bluntness.

The furor had barely begun to subside when Giscard suddenly came under fire from another quarter. Le Canard Enchaine, the Paris weekly that had accused the President in 1979 of accepting a small fortune in diamonds from deposed Central African Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa, published new evidence casting serious doubt on Giscard's latest explanation of the affair. In his television appearance, Giscard had seemed to put the bizarre matter to rest by explaining that he had received nothing more from Bokassa than had been offered other heads of state. The diamonds were not "large stones having great value." He said he had deposited them for safekeeping in the Elysee until Bokassa's overthrow, then had sold them and delivered the proceeds to several -- Central African charities, including the Red Cross.

Le Canard published a cable | from a Red Cross representative | in the Central African Republic | named Ruth Rolland: "I have received no gift from the President of the French Republic." The Elysee nervously countered that the money had been sent a month ago, on Feb. 4, not some 18 months ago, as Giscard had suggested on television. Moreover, Giscard aides explained, the money had not been sent directly to the charities, but rather to the Central African government of David Dacko, Bokassa's successor. Dacko confirmed the receipt of the money earmarked for the Red Cross, then revealed the amount: $8,000. Paris jewelers quickly noted that a single-carat diamond of good quality was worth as much.

Giscard also had to contend with the publication this week of a book that the French public has long expected might tell all about the diamonds and Giscard's relations with Bokassa. Manipulation, by Roger Delpey, is anticlimactic, but it does contradict Giscard's account in some respects.

Delpey alleges that one batch of 36 top-grade gems was given to Giscard while he was still Finance Minister, and thus it would have been unusual to have stored them with other state gifts in the Elysee. He also claims that Bokassa gave some 200 stones to Giscard over the years, which would presumably be worth far more than $8,000. Delpey's disclosures will hardly make Giscard's campaign any easier. With seven weeks to go, the latest polls show Giscard and Mitterrand running neck and neck. --ByRuss Hoyle.

Reported by Sandra Burton/Paris

With reporting by Sandra Burton/Paris

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