Word: gaullist
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...results brought personal satisfaction to Jacques Chirac, former Premier and head of the newly formed Assembly for the Republic. At a preelection rally in Paris' cavernous Palais des Sports, 5,000 Chirac supporters cheered wildly as the Gaullist mayoralty candidate reiterated his two campaign pledges: "Only we can govern Paris! Only we can build a dike to contain the Socialist-Communist tide!" In the first of two rounds of nationwide municipal elections last week, Chirac won enough support virtually to assure his election as mayor. But outside the capital, he barely managed to keep his finger in the dike...
...Premier last summer with the complaint that he was never granted sufficient power, ambitious and driving Jacques ("Bulldozer") Chirac, 44, has been gunning for President Valèry Giscard d'Estaing. At a massive, brilliantly orchestrated political rally last month, Chirac took personal command of the Gaullist party with the clear aim of replacing Giscard as leader of the government's parliamentary majority (TIME, Dec. 20). For a while Giscard loftily dismissed the ruckus as mere subaltern political maneuvering. But last week Chirac flung down a challenge to the President's authority and prestige that could...
Rupture. Chirac jumped into the fray after weeks of backroom negotiations between Giscardians and Gaullists failed to produce a compromise on a candidate. Calling Ornano's candidacy already a failure, Chirac said he was offering his own "so that the capital of France does not run the risk of falling into Socialist-Communist hands." The logic convinced no one. Premier Raymond Barre, visibly angered, charged that Chirac's move would sow such political confusion in the ranks of the majority that his economic-recovery program would be "compromised." Added Centrist Leader Jean Lecanuet: "Far from strengthening the majority...
...work youth. Sixty thousand Frenchmen, according to the organizers, converged on a fairground at Paris's Porte de Versailles. In the post-dawn cold, they disbanded the last of Charles deGaulle's parties, the Democratic and Republican Union (DRU), and thus marked the nominal end to the gaullist era in French politics...
Chirac makes decisions impulsively and quickly-a trait that some observers predict will sooner or later lead him into a fatal blunder. Observes National Assembly President Edgar Faure: "Giscard plays bridge. Chirac plays poker." Gaullist leader Yves Guena looks at Chirac's propensity to take political gambles somewhat differently: "Chirac's real genius is his intuition...