Word: center
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...same time, Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, 45, the ambitious leader of the Gaullist Party, ceased to be the dominant influence within the center-right coalition. Indeed, one of the election's surprises was that the Union pour la Démocratie Française, a loose group of parties supporting Giscard, had polled a remarkable 6 million votes, only 1.1% less than Chirac's party, thereby breaking the Gaullists' five-year stranglehold on the National Assembly. As a result, Giscard, 51, emerged as both the master of present-day French politics and the architect of the nation...
Despite his victory, Giscard was aware that the election results could be read as a warning as well as a mandate. The popular vote in the runoff dramatically illustrated this: 14.8 million voted for Giscard's center-right, 13.9 million for the other side. Accordingly, in an arresting, postelection appearance on nationwide television last week, Giscard made his first conciliatory move toward the left. Looking relaxed and confident, he extended an open hand. "I am addressing myself to those who voted for the opposition; it was your right. But you should know that for the President of the republic...
...President's tentative "opening to the left" inevitably displeased Chirac, whose indefatigable, tub-thumping anti-Communist campaign had contributed mightily to the center-right coalition's victory in the election. He quickly claimed that his party's "essential role" in the campaign had now given the Gaullists "legitimate means" to carry out their platform, which stresses law and order and faster economic growth. Not to be outdone by Giscard's promises of social change, Chirac, who plans to run for the presidency when Giscard's term expires, asserted that France needs "profound reforms, not superficial...
...other trial, presumably being conducted in a deep hideout somewhere in Rome, was the "People's Tribunal" of Moro. This, according to a Red Brigades message that was left atop an automatic photo booth in the center of the city along with a picture showing Moro in captivity, was the terrorists' way of dealing with the man whom they accused of "criminal counterrevolution." Other public officials who have been similarly kidnaped in the past have also been subjected to these "trials," which consisted largely of forcing the victims to endure endless Marxist diatribes before they were released...
...chilling professional precision exhibited by one of the killers. One bodyguard had managed to get out of the car and fire three shots at the terrorists-yet one of the killers was cool enough to take two to three seconds for careful aim before shooting the bodyguard in the center of his forehead...