MItterrand: A Socialist Victory

By Frederick Painton

The challenger wins the presidency and charts a risky course

For a majority of the French, the time had come at last for a dramatic change in the nation's long-frozen political landscape. Seven years under patrician, aloof President Valery Giscard d'Estaing were enough. Twenty-three years of government by the same center-right majority had proved too much. As if they had been dared once too often to take the risk, French voters this week chose Socialist Leader Franc,ois Mitterrand, 64, an unflappable veteran politician whom many thought a perennial loser, as the fourth President of the Fifth Republic. They thus embarked on the country's boldest venture toward the left since 1936, setting the stage for a risky economic transformation.

It was a bitter defeat for Giscard, who bowed out after 29 years in government, including nine years as Finance Minister, then seven as President. Within a half-hour of the first computer projections showing that Mitterrand had won, Giscard conceded. The margin of victory was larger than had been predicted: 51.7% for Mitterrand, vs. 48.3% for Giscard.

Throughout the closing weeks of the campaign, Giscard had prophesied darkly that since Mitterrand was backed by the Communists, his presidency would bring chaos--and Communists--into government. Giscard was using scare tactics that had worked for the center-right ever since the time of De Gaulle. The presence of a strong Communist Party, representing around 20% of the electorate, had always blocked the left from coming to power under the Fifth Republic. This time, though, Frenchmen no longer seemed as alarmed as in the past by a Communist Party that had polled a humiliatingly low 15.3% in the first round of the presidential voting April 26.

Communist Party Chief Georges Marchais, though visibly shaken by his first-round setback, was hardly resigned to a marginal role under a Mitterrand presidency, however. Indeed, Marchais was quick to show that ill urging his disciplined followers to vote for Mitterrand in last week's runoff, he was making less than a genuine fraternal gesture of leftist solidarity. "This is not a blank check," he said and then asked, "Have you ever seen me support anyone for free?" There is little doubt that the wily proletarian leader will soon be knocking at the portals of Elysee Palace to present his bill: Communist ministers in government, and radical economic programs.

To many observers, Mitterrand's own formula for economic reform seems sweeping enough. Blaming Giscard's free-enterprise approach for France's record unemployment of 1.7 million (7.2%), Mitterrand campaigned doggedly on the promise of "another policy." Among other things, it calls for: 1) nationalization of the country's remaining private banks and eleven major industrial enterprises; 2) creation of 1,560,000 jobs, mostly through increased public hiring and a reduction of the work week to 35 hours; and 3) an immediate 25% raise in the minimum wage, to $3.60 an hour. Many French economists view Mitterrand's plan as a recipe for combined inflation, balance of payments deficits and a feeble franc.

But whatever its dangers, there is no guarantee that any of the Socialist pro grams will win legislative approval. The Socialists now hold only 117 of the 491 seats in the National Assembly, while the Communists have 86. Once Giscard's term ends on May 24, the new President intends to name a Premier and a Cabinet--in effect, an unprecedented transition government that can take limited action without parliamentary approval on social and fiscal matters, and conduct day to day foreign policy. In the long run, though, Mitterrand will need legislative backing, particularly for any major economic and reform measures. He is expected to dissolve parliament later this month and call legislative elections, probably in mid-June, to seek a governing majority.

Mitterrand's central problem is that he owes his election less to an undeniable upsurge of Socialist sentiment than to a powerful anti-Giscard reaction that cut across the political spectrum. Not only did he pick up a substantial portion of the Communist, ecologist and small leftist party votes; Mitterrand also benefited from defections in the ranks of the neo-Gaullist Rally for the Republic (R.P.R.) party that has been a somewhat troublesome member of Giscard's own parliamentary majority. Under the ebullient leadership of Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, 48, who made a strong 18% showing in the first round, the party clearly showed that it no longer identified its own interests with those of Giscard. Chirac urged his first-round supporters to think about "the risk that Mr. Mitterrand's election would pose for France." But some R.P.R. tacticians coldly calculated that they might gain more from leading the opposition under a Mitterrand presidency than continuing as junior partners to Giscard.

The high point of the campaign came after Giscard challenged his opponent to a face-to-face debate on national television. Watched by some 30 million viewers last week, the 130-minute duel was restrained and evenly matched, although there were several sharp exchanges. Giscard bored in on the ambiguities in Mitterrand's positions, especially the Socialist leader's relations with the Communists. "You must show your colors," Giscard said, wagging his finger sternly. The challenger, for his part, blasted away at Giscard's record on unemployment. "One cannot believe you any more," said Mitterrand. "Now 1.7 million are unemployed. There will be 2.5 million by 1985 if your policies are continued." Unlike their 1974 debate, in which Giscard overpowered the Socialist leader, last week's encounter did not appear to have been decisive in swinging the vote.

The new President was born in 1916 in the small southwestern town of Jarnac, in the Cognac region. His active political career began with World War II. Shot in the chest and captured near Verdun, he escaped from a German prison camp and joined the Resistance as an organizer of former P.O.W.s. Shortly after the war, Mitterrand was elected to the National Assembly as a candidate for the Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance, a small but pivotal center party that won a surprising number of Cabinet posts under the Fourth Republic. Over a 13-year period, Mitterrand held eight Cabinet posts--and earned a reputation as a political chameleon. It was De Gaulle's return to power in 1958 that finally cast Mitterrand into the leftist camp. He denounced the creation of the Fifth Republic as a "power play" aimed at fracturing the left opposition. Ever since, Mitterrand has striven for a broad reunified left, a goal that eludes him even now in his hour of victory.

For all of his years on the hustings, Mitterrand's personal passion is not politics but literature. The new President spends hours reading or writing (he has authored ten books on politics) in the library of the town house in Paris' Left Bank where he lives with his wife of 36 years, Danielle. They have two grown sons. In place of Giscard's technocratic competence, Mitterrand offers a romantic if hazy vision of a more humane and just French society. "I don't calculate," says Mitterrand, "I feel."

One of his instincts has convinced him of the need to decentralize the French government. Borrowing an idea from fellow Socialist Michel Rocard, he proposes to replace the Paris-appointed prefects who preside over the nation's 96 departements with locally elected officials. The aim: to put government back in the hands of the people. Mitterrand will also push for greater worker participation in the management of companies.

But for all Mitterrand's talk of decentralization, his economic policies seem to promise instead a significant expansion of government. His employment plan, for example, would create a minimum of 210,000 state-financed jobs over the next year at an estimated cost of $2.2 billion. Another 950,000 work places would be created over the next three years by reducing the work week to 35 hours, while retirement age would be reduced to 60 for men, 55 for women.

Mitterrand's nationalization plans have not caused nearly as much dismay in business circles as his talk of restructuring France's current trade patterns, reports TIME Correspondent William Blaylock. The new President proposes, for example, to protect French industries and reduce imports by reinforcing trade restrictions against Japan. That could ultimately disrupt relations with France's other traditional trading partners and even jeopardize its commitment to the European Community.

Under Mitterrand, France's role in the world will probably change less than economic policy at home--although his vagueness on foreign affairs makes it difficult to foresee his ultimate course. For example, he has called for a "redefinition" of NATO members' obligations; at the same time, his reluctance to modernize French nuclear weapons implies a greater dependence on NATO's protection. During the campaign, Mitterrand effectively attacked Giscard for his weak responses to the Soviet arms buildup in Europe and the invasion of Afghanistan. Yet the Socialist leader never explained clearly what it was he would have done differently. As for relations with the U.S., chillier days may be ahead, if only because of the ideological chasm between Paris' new leftist government and the conservative Reagan Administration.

Mitterrand's habitual vagueness has been tied to a long-standing political strategy that sought to appeal to the broadest possible range of supporters. Twice in the past seven years, the left under Mitterrand's leadership has come breathlessly close to power, only to lose elections at the last minute as French voters flinched at the specter of Socialists and Communists sharing power. The years of tactical hedging are over. For Mitterrand, the presidency is a liberation. Only now will France, and the rest of the world, learn what kind of leadership the voters have chosen in their quest for change.

-- By Frederick Painton.

Reported by Sandra Burton and Henry Muller/Paris

With reporting by Sandra Burton, Henry Muller

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