Word: mitterrand
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...small knots of young people gathered under the watchful gaze of riot police to shout sullenly, and absurdly, "A victory for fascism!" Such were the sharply distinct reactions to longtime Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's knife-edge victory over Socialist Françoise Mitterrand in France's presidential runoff last week...
...thousand votes in the narrow, shifting center of France's sharply polarized political spectrum. Giscard won possession of the Elysée Palace for the next seven years with a bare 50.8% majority, or some 423,000 votes.* A small swing to the left might easily have made Mitterrand the winner, and given France its first left-wing government since Leon Blum's Popular Front of the 1930s...
...France's cold civil war seemed to heat up in its final days, that was because it was the closest race for President since Charles de Gaulle created the Fifth Republic in 1958. From the moment that Mitterrand and Giscard emerged as the leaders in the first-round election earlier this month, France's usually reliable opinion polls had the two candidates running almost dead even. At week's end one survey showed Giscard with a narrow 51% to 49% edge over Mitterrand in the decided votes, with 11% of the voters still undecided. The tightness...
...campaign laid bare deep divisions within French society-divisions that would surely trouble whomever the voters choose to succeed the late Georges Pompidou. A victory by Mitterrand would bring to power the first left-wing coalition government in France since Leon Blum's Popular Front in the turbulent late 1930s. A Mitterrand regime would also include the first Communists in any major Western European Cabinet since the cold war began-a fact that might legitimize the idea of Communists sharing power in other Western European countries, notably Italy...
...Minister for the past five years, Giscard might be expected to set aside any costly new social programs that would interfere with efforts to control a rate of inflation running upwards of 18% a year. Foreign policy under both men would probably not veer markedly from Gaullist tradition, although Mitterrand might well maintain an even more abrasively independent stance toward the U.S. and NATO...