Word: frenchmen
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...first week after the referendum, Frenchmen had seemed almost frightened by what they had wrought. If presidential elections had been held then, Georges Pompidou, 57, De Gaulle's political heir, might have had a walkover. But with every passing day the national sense of guilt lessened, the Gaullist support dwindled, and the "other" France took over...
...What was surprising was that close behind him, with a hefty 35% of the vote, came Interim President Alain Poher. The showing made the still undeclared Poher a serious candidate who could conceivably outdistance Pompidou in the election set for June 1 - or certainly force him into a runoff. Frenchmen asked to choose only between the two favorites were almost evenly divided: Pompidou got 50.5% of the vote, Poher...
...English-language weekly edition could hardly have been more auspicious: it came out the Wednesday before the referendum that brought down Charles de Gaulle. Le Monde cast a cool eye at De Gaulle's threatened resignation, denounced it as "a kind of blackmail," and wondered whether Frenchmen should "grant General de Gaulle the 'blank cheque' that he is demanding." Le Monde seemed to think that they should not. The next week, the paper accepted the results as more or less foreordained, dissected the non vote and analyzed M. Pompidou's bid for "Gaullism without De Gaulle...
...policemen blanketing Paris on riot standby. He thought that they were a partisan element as well, tending to give credence to De Gaulle's oft-proclaimed prophecy that after his departure chaos would ensue. Then he dismissed Gaullist Jacques Foccart as Secretary-General for African Affairs. Knowledgeable Frenchmen were delighted: Foccart's African designation was in fact a façade for his job as boss of the Gaullist "Barbouzes," a thuggish lot of secret police and informers...
Poher was largely unknown to Frenchmen before the referendum battles, in spite of a 25-year public career. The son of a successful civil engineer, he won degrees in engineering, law and political science, became a protégé of Robert Schuman and served at sub-Cabinet level in several Fourth Republic governments before entering the Senate. Schuman converted him into a European unionist. Poher worked with the European Coal and Steel Community, later became a member of the European Parliament at Strasbourg. Last October he was elected Senate President, succeeding its longtime leader Gaston Monnerville, who had resigned...