Word: mitterrand
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...celebrities-featured on magazine covers and on TV talk shows. The New Philosophers have no wide popular following and are unlikely to have much impact on next March's elections, when France's Socialist-Communist coalition hopes to win power. Nonetheless, Socialist Party Chief François Mitterrand has promised to write a rebuttal to their views, which he says are "too important" for off-hand comment...
That is the situation in the opening pages of a new novel published in France last week. Titled The 180 Days of Mitterrand, the book probes what will happen if the Socialist and Communist parties gain power in next March's parliamentary elections - which is entirely possible. The work of a so far anonymous author, Days is an instant hit: its first printing of 50,000 copies sold out in a day. The novel says the book editor of the French newsmagazine L 'Express, is "a marvelous projection of the present that always remains on the edge...
...Days' projection, reality is pretty grim. The left-wing coalition headed by François Mitterrand, France's Socialist Party leader, and Georges Marchais, boss of the Communist Party, starts out in triumph. The coalition wins a comfortable 293 places in the 490-seat Assembly. But six months later, the new government collapses...
...President, Giscard, among other things, is chief of the armed forces and presides over the Cabinet. Elected in 1974, Giscard is aghast at the prospect of having to deal with left-wing ministers for the rest of his seven-year term. He urges Mitterrand to form a government that would include politicians who are not members of the leftist union. Mitterrand refuses, archly citing "a clear and precise contract" to carry out the left's common program-which calls for sweeping nationalization of private industry, big wage hikes and increased social benefits. Mitterrand, forming his Socialist-Communist Cabinet, appoints...
...while, things run smoothly enough. But then the regime's Socialist and Communist partners begin bickering. The Communists attack Mitterrand when he decides to refuse to nationalize a failing acetate firm, insisting that the party "has not come to power to close plants!" In turn, Mitterrand blasts the Communists as "demagogic and irresponsible...