Word: gaullists
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...leftist victory in the March parliamentary elections as a welcome breath of spring rather than a fearful typhoon. A survey appearing in the newsmagazine Le Point this week shows that 52% of the electorate would vote for the leftist parties as against 44% for the center-right. One top Gaullist leader even believes that the left might well reach 55% by election time. If that happens, Socialist Leader Francois Mitterrand would almost certainly become Premier-and France would face the possibility of having Communists in Cabinet posts for the first time in 30 years...
...denouncing their Socialist partners. On the other, the faltering government of Premier Raymond Barre was faced with a sharpening hostility between supporters of Barre's boss, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac, who had been Premier himself before he quit to reorganize the Gaullist party. What was once anticipated to be a clear-cut duel between left and right in the March parliamentary elections had degenerated to a four-sided political brawl. Unlike their Italian brethren, who were surging forward, France's Communists were spewing gall...
French anxiety takes several forms. For the political right, uneasiness has been a way of life in recent years. The Gaullists and the business community, led by Jacques Chirac, entered into partnership with moderate President Valery Giscard D'Estaing upon his election in 1974. Ever since, however, they have looked askance at many of Giscard's liberal policies and reform attempts. Chirac's political ambitions, plus the Gaullist fear of Giscard's mildly leftist tendencies, provoked a split between the center and right which culminated in Chirac's election as mayor of Paris last spring. But by summer, a greater...
...chief beneficiary of the leftist breach is the coalition of center-right parties?which itself is rent by dissension between its two leaders, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist mayor of Paris. Until mid-September virtually every public opinion poll in France indicated that the leftist alliance would win a majority of the seats in the March 1978 elections. But according to a study by the pro-Socialist weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, the Giscard-Chi-rac coalition would win 246 National Assembly seats to 241 for the Socialists and Communists if elections were held today...
Discard's comeback appeared to confirm the wisdom of his election tactic ?namely, to stay above the political fray. One reason for his break with Chirac last year was Giscard's refusal to join the Gaullist leader, who then was the country's Premier, in a concerted public assault on the left. Giscard reasoned that attacks would only weld the Communists and Socialists together; if left alone, he calculated, the parties would be torn apart by internal contradictions. His analysis is proving correct...