Word: gaullist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...predicted that Charles de Gaulle's referendum would go down to defeat. Les psephologistes, of course, had the last laugh. So when Le Figaro last week published the first public-opinion survey showing preferences for De Gaulle's successor, candidates and voters paid close attention. As expected, Gaullist ex-Premier Georges Pompidou led the field, the choice of 42% of those queried. 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...
Last week's polls only partly indicate how formidable a threat Poher is to Pompidou. If no one wins a majority on June 1, a runoff election between the two top vote getters will be held two weeks later. Pompidou might then find that Gaullist drawing power is fixed. If Poher, on the other hand, can assemble a large anti-Gaullist coalition - such as defeated the referendum - his current 35% reading might translate into a majority, as those voters who backed candidates eliminated in Round 1 choose between the two survivors. He already has the endorsement...
...week's end, in a speech to the Gaullist party's central committee, Pompidou made his most open bid so far for the vote of disaffected centrists. The referendum indicated a "desire for change," he said. He favored "the enlargement of Europe" and the development of a "European political consciousness"-both of which suffered under De Gaulle's domineering leadership. Clearly, Pompidou was promising a government that would significantly alter De Gaulle's eleven-year legacy...
Understandably, Poher's first Cabinet meeting with the Gaullist government was, said a Minister, "glacial." Poher's aides gaily replied that if the Ministers had found the meeting frosty, Poher had warmly enjoyed himself. The interim President was not amused, however, when a few hours later news agencies carried the remarks of Foreign Minister Michel Debré made at the meeting, that "France suffered a defeat last Sunday." Poher's office issued a sharp rebuke, noting that Ministers were not authorized to disclose the Cabinet's secret deliberations...
...Paris, the Communists astonishingly called off their traditional parade from the Bastille to the Place de la République, charging that a conspiracy of students and "Gaullist thugs" would have turned the route into a battlefield. The government followed through by banning all demonstrations and parades, and student protesters were nailed as they emerged from subway cars...