Word: mending
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...second time in ten days, Premier Faure last week risked the life of his government on a vote of confidence over the issue of new Assembly elections in December. His principal opponent was his predecessor, party leader and onetime friend, Pierre Mendès-France. Faure's objective, with the help of the Assembly's right wing, was to force elections before
...Mendès had a chance to organize a coalition of the Left. Mendès' strategy was to seek modifications of France's complex electoral law, hoping to stall elections until spring and eventually go to the voters under a system favorable to his own candidates...
...opposition did likewise. Ailing Communist Chief Maurice Thorez, making his first appearance since he suffered a stroke in 1950, limped in on a cane to cast a vote against Faure. But the dominant fact of the present Assembly is that it fears a return to power by Pierre Mendès-France more than it dislikes Edgar Faure. By threatening the Gaullists with loss of all right-wing support in the next elections, Faure's backers pressured a dozen or so Gaullist deputies into abstaining rather than voting against him. When the ballots were counted, the government squeaked through...
Suddenly, all France rang with voices warning the politicos to mend their ways. President René Coty himself joined in the alarm: "In the course of their ephemeral existence, the successive chiefs of government have unceasingly, and for any reason, seen their confidence and authority questioned by those who invested them. Day after day, they are tormented and harassed until they are morally and physically exhausted." Pointedly, Coty cited Clemenceau's dictum: "Liberty is the right to discipline oneself so as not to be disciplined by others." In the pages of Le Figaro, André François-Poncet...
When ex-Premier Mendès-France offered the Assembly a bold program of action, the Deputies at first found it refreshing. But on further consideration, they decided that they did not like Mendès' brand of boldness. "Adventurism," they called it, and dismissed Mendès. Premier Edgar Faure offered them the opposite-a policy of the political carom shot, the showdown avoided, the adroit maneuver, the delicate adjustment. Last week the Deputies of France suddenly discovered that they were no longer amused by Edgar's "cleverness" either. Since in France the Assembly's whim...