Word: laniel
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...shaken and depressed. Former Premier Pierre Mendès-France, playing shrewdly on France's century-old fear of German domination, had belabored the proposal in language and innuendo all but identical to that used by the Communist orators. Worse yet. four other former Premiers-Edgar Faure. Joseph Laniel, Antoine Pinay and Paul Reynaud-lent their names to a motion that demanded as the price of French participation that the other five nations must agree to put up capital for France's overseas territo ries, while giving France complete control over the spending of the money...
Predictably, the most vocal opponents of French participation in the Common Market were the Communists (who dismissed the whole thing as a "Vatican conspiracy") and the right wing led by ex-Premiers Antoine Pinay, Paul Reynaud, Edgar Faure and Joseph Laniel. The bitterest-and most surprising-attack was delivered by ex-Premier Pierre Mendes-France, the man who once talked boldly of "opening the windows" of the French economy. Now Mendes, whose political influence has greatly diminished, argued that opening the windows so high would drive out French capital and bring in unemployed...
...Tunisia, Faure told the Assembly, "home rule had been promised. It is now accomplished." But what the Deputies were waiting to hear was what Faure proposed to do about seething Algeria and Morocco. Each was well aware that two years ago, Premier Joseph Laniel had only waited until they left town before deposing Morocco's Sultan Ben Yussef and installing Sultan Ben Moulay Arafa in his stead. Now the diehards in the Assembly suspected Edgar Faure of only waiting for the same chance to depose weak-willed Sultan Ben Moulay Arafa in his turn...
...Juggler. But even Faure almost failed before he succeeded. His first move was to consult his old friend Mendès-France. Mendès had kept Faure on as Finance Minister after the fall of the Laniel "richman's government," until Mendès could turn his personal attention to reform of the creaking French economy. More than any man, Faure is credited with France's relative prosperity of the past year and a half. But even before Mendès' fall, there had been friction between Mendès and his more conservative Finance Minister...
...over to the National Assembly to try to save the day, he arrived just in time to hear a right-wing Deputy explaining that former Foreign Minister Georges Bidault had been all set to clear up the whole Indo-China mess when Mendès interfered and toppled the Laniel Cabinet. "That sounds like a beautiful serialized novel," Mendès cracked, but the Assembly was not amused. It voted him down 301 to 291, the first major parliamentary defeat that he has suffered...