Word: cabineteers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After three weeks of floundering in crisis, Fance had a new government. The new Premier was Georges Bidault, 50, head of the Mouvement Républicain Populaire (the French branch of Europe's Christian democrats). At midnight, with his cabinet posts already assigned and the Radical and Socialist parties satisfied, Bidault went before the Assembly and won a cushiony vote of confidence, 367 to 183. Every non-Communist deputy except one voted for Bidault; yet there were many who, with deep misgivings about the prospects of his regime, voted for him because they could not stand the floundering...
Bidault, whose party has been losing ground to De Gaulle's followers, does not want an election. So the spunky little man will do his best to keep France's latest jerry-built cabinet from crashing down...
...Karen question might have been settled peaceably last year if both sides had shown a little more trust, cooperation and coolheadedness. "The trouble with us," said Socialist U Kyaw Nyein (who became a cabinet minister at 32), "is that we are all young and inexperienced." Finance Secretary U Kyin echoed him: "We are free but we don't yet know how to rule ourselves...
Furthermore, the issue on which the Quenille cabinet fell was not a crucial one--a stable government could have survived it. The issue was whether or not to lift the anti-inflation wage controls to give a bonus to the lowest income groups, in compensation for rising prices. The inflation in France is considerable, but the country is in relatively good shape in spite of it., thanks to ECA aid and to the initiative of her own industry. Production now equals that in the highest prewar year...
Another factor, of course, is France's multi-party system--Queuille's Cabinet alone had representatives of eight different political parties. Since the Communists and the anti-government extremists on the Right control nearly half of the seats in the Assembly, a coalition of moderates requires the cooperation of members with wide differences of political sympathy, a range that in U.S. politics would extend from left-wing New Dealers to Senator Taft. There is no majority party, and for two years, the Communists, who have a plurality, have not been represented in the Cabinet. To add to the difficulties...