Word: french
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...years following World War II, the French Communists regularly won 20% or more of the vote and dominated a section around Paris known as the Red Belt. But in parliamentary elections in March the Communists got just 9.8% of the vote. French Party Boss Georges Marchais, who polled 15% when he ran for President in 1981, has decided not to run in the 1988 elections...
...that would appeal to a larger group of leftist voters, the Communists began to look like just another party that would compromise and make back-room deals. In Italy, the party's break with Moscow left voters questioning what kind of program the Communists would put into place. The French Communists' decision to join, then pull out of, a Socialist government had comrades grousing that the alliance had been a tactical mistake...
...Eurocommunists also misread the pulse of a new generation of voters. While they promoted an agenda of disarmament, peace and democracy, they failed to offer voters a concrete program that would tackle the consumer-oriented concerns of the 1980s, such as inflation and unemployment. Says Pierre Hassner, a French expert on Communist affairs: "The Communist Party has become a party of another era. It's old-fashioned, and that's political suicide...
Bastille Day is traditionally a day for the French to put aside their % differences. But no sooner had Socialist President Francois Mitterrand and conservative Premier Jacques Chirac finished their review of the military parade at the Place de la Concorde last week than Mitterrand issued the sharpest challenge yet to the conservative government with which he has uneasily shared power since March...
Despite a long-standing political rivalry between Mitterrand and Chirac, cohabitation has been more amiable than many French pundits had predicted. With last week's clash, however, both leaders signaled that there are limits to their reservoirs of amiability. "Cohabitation is a tandem bicycle," said Assembly Deputy Philippe Mestre in a clash of metaphors, "on which the two cyclists pedal in opposite directions...