Word: mitterand
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Communists are now openly competing for Socialist votes. The divisive issue of how many corporations would be nationalized under leftist rule prompted the final break. George Marchais, secretary of the Communist Party, demanded as many as 1500 nationalizations. He finally whittled this figure down to 729, but Francois Mitterand, chief of the Socialist Party, wanted to keep the actual number of nationalized companies as low as possible. White collar workers and managers comprise about one-third of the Socialist's Constituency, and Mitterand has to tailor his policies to their support. The Socialists held firm to their limit...
...French leftists now fear that they have been cheated of their chance to rise to power. They are alternately annoyed with Marchais, with Mitterand, or with both. Hard line Stalinists, of course, were glad to see the breakup of the leftist coalition, since they prefer ideological purity to compromise. But many Communists and Socialists are more interested in power than in ideology, and they were upset by the deliberate refusal of the left to combine for victory at the polls. Criticism forced Marchais to embark last month on a $2 million campaign to convince the party faithful that...
...largest leftist party in France (with 30 per cent of the voters solidly behind them), the Socialists are less troubled by the split than some of the Communists. They reason that Marchais eventually will have to compromise with Mitterand if he wants to enter the government, but they retain a sense of acute disappointment, especially after the heyday of last summer which convinced everyone that France would have a government of the left in 1978. "We had everything going for us last spring and summer," a 19-year old student and Socialist Party member from Marseilles explained last week...
...public economic woes bring the left to power. Both sides are worried about the future and uncertain whether they will be able to win at the polls in March. At present, it seems unlikely that the left will come to even loose agreements on policy before the elections. Mitterand extended an olive branch to Marchais last week when he stressed that his party and the Communists did agree on many aspects of the Common Program; but Marchais responded in a party summit yesterday by calling for "formidable battle" against the Socialists. A number of factors, not least of which...
...over, the worries of the French will be translated into realities. No one knows what shape the government will takes after March, but most observers expect increasing instability. Two new political novels have recently appeared in the book stalls in Paris, highlighting the situation. One, "The 180 Days of Mitterand," describes the rise and fall of a leftist government following the elections. The other, "The 180 Days of Giscard D'Estaing," describes an equally swift victory and failure for the currently ruling center coalition. The tragedy of modern France is that either occurrence appears equally likely, at present...